


Draw

by AwesomeJon



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, ward remix
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:49:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24954064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwesomeJon/pseuds/AwesomeJon
Summary: It's a familiar story. A young hero from Brockton Bay attempts to find her way forward after Gold Morning. Alternate earths scheme and plot, old dynamics reassert themselves, a threat looms....people learn to be okay. But this time, a well loved character is part of the action.Perhaps the most straightforward thing I've ever written. For now. And for a limited time only, available in past tense!
Relationships: Thomas Calvert | Coil/Emily Piggot
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9





	1. Chapter 1

_**-d-** _

I stood in the alley, admiring the graffiti piece adorning a worn brick wall. I say piece, not tag, because it was absolutely art, okay. It was beautiful. 

Unless you'd been there. 

Golden hexagons clashed with golden rays, in a fashion someone less cultured (perhaps myself, when I was younger) might have compared to Starry Night. But it was really more Kandinsky, maybe, or the vorticists — anyway, _motion_ was the impulse behind the image. Catastrophe! Apocalypse! A "beginending", if you will. 

It was appropriate, I thought. Then my eyes met the center of the piece. The eyes at the center, the face. Compound eyes, portals made of smaller hexagons, stared into mine. Blue and white were prominent on the woman's mask, her costume… 

I was willing to bet the artist, whoever it was, had intentionally drawn on depictions of the virgin Mary. Yet the cloud of flies around her head was a black parody of a halo if I had ever seen one, and again, entirely appropriate. The picture gave me the creeps. I knew it was _meant_ to. 

Which is why the inscription at the bottom made me so _fucking_ angry. 

**SAY HER NAME** , it said, in blood red gashes rimmed with a hint of light. 

I did. 

"Her name was Emma Barnes. And right when she started to turn things around, you killed her. You didn't pull the trigger, you weren't even there, but you did. Fuck you." 

Then I shimmered into shadow and marched directly through the fucking Banksy bullshit in front of me. Leaving the memories behind, like flies on the wall. 

_**-a-** _

Winslow hadn't changed in years. I had, though. Still cowering, a reflex, despite those tense hours in the lunchroom. This time, to protect my arm. It was a weak, flimsy, fragile prosthetic — easily removable. Paid for by an anonymous bank deposit, I suspected the message was obvious. "What I give, I can take away". 

It's a…bit of a leap to say that I cowered to protect my second chance. But the fifteen year old in front of me was a real, credible threat. "Eighteen and still a freshman, Taylor?" The words stung. Yes. Eighteen and I hadn't even begun, really. 

I met Emma's eyes, then flinched. I looked at my shoes, considering my next words. Was this the right move? The stakes were high. 

Then Madison tittered, and my decision was made. "At least I'm not fucking _dead_ , Emma. There's no way you survived _**that**_."

Madison gasped. Emma began to cry. My head swam, and I could hear my dad in the distance. 

"Taylor," he called urgently. I felt my shoulders shake. Was I crying? Or being attacked by something I couldn't see? 

"Taylor!" I woke. Oh. Right. 

I sat up, smiling weakly and hugging my dad. "I was dreaming again." 

He nodded. "I sometimes wonder if we aren't dreaming all of this." 

I clicked my tongue, reserving full comment. My thoughts on the matter were…too complex. Suffice to say he didn't want to know. "It's better than what I dreamed before. Without you."

_**-d-** _

They called this area of New Brockton "FMJ". It's because the residents were all hardcore old school Brockton Bay residents — hard exterior, hard core, capacity for violence, etc. I lived two blocks up, in a good apartment on the first floor of one of the manufactured housing centers. I should have been living here, but my Wards status had its privileges. Even if I was in prison when _it_ went down. 

No. I was here to patrol, solo. It's not that none of the existing teams would take me, it's that I didn't want anyone else with me. I couldn't do the things I used to do, as spectacularly and efficiently as I wanted to. People went missing here all the time. They were never the bad guys. 

I had made it my mission to change that. The residents of FMJ seemed to approve, even if Mayor Kiley didn't. She'd rather have the "Parahuman Community Justice Council" handle things. And that sounded like six concepts I'd rather avoid at once. One being the PRT. 

The sixth was the one that summed them all up. They sounded like a bunch of fuckin' Tattletales. And I was here to take out the biggest one of the bunch. 

Yeah. That one, you heard me. A serrated broadhead to the throat and nobody would have to listen to that smug bitch yak on about…oh, man, what didn't she? 

It was especially galling given that I know how much Taylor hated Emma. Tattletale represented a betrayal. She _was_ hypocrisy, she made kin of hypocrites, and I was intent on bringing her down. 

Not in my city. Not on my watch. 

I took up a perch on a rooftop overlooking the warehouse I thought she was operating out of. Her money wasn't what it used to be, nor was her power — shades of Emma when I met her, a little voice said, and I swallowed it like the treasonous bile it was — and this place was decidedly not what she'd been used to back when she ruled a quarter of my hometown. 

I sighted down the red dot I'd modified my latest crossbow with, getting comfy in my prone position. I thought I heard a noise, but I dismissed it — cars were scarce, and I was probably filling the silence with what I expected to be there. 

A second later, I forgot I'd ever heard anything at all. There she was, coming out of the front door in broad daylight. Stepping into the street, leaving me a clean shot, turning and… 

Grinning at me. What the fuck. 

"I saw you admiring my artwork," said a voice behind me. I jumped six feet out of my skin, or it felt like I did (in truth, not reflexively going shadow took more control than usual), and turned from the target to look over my shoulder. It was quite the uncomfortable position, and the impish grin looking back at me made it even worse. 

"So you set up an ambush." I wasn't bitter, honest. It was impressive. Maybe a little peeved, was all. 

"Yup." Imp grinned. "But I bet not for the reasons you think." 

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, I know. She taught you guys to be more like her, and you're not gonna just kill me…I'm not stupid." 

Imp laughed, harsh with surprise. " _Hardly_ , Stalker, you self important shit. What it is, is I overheard you talking to...to the picture, right." 

I smirked. "Say her name." 

Imp shook her head. "When you do. I only speak of her among equals." 

My face twisted in rage. "How _dare_ you! I _made_ her…"

Imp put a hand over my mouth and I squawked, indignantly, but it was muffled. I had to admit I could see why she was laughing at me. This was not my finest hour. 

"I have my own basket cases I'm trying to fix. Tats is short one, the last few months. She thinks you missed some things, and she thinks — based on what I told her about what you said — that she can help you find those things." 

I scoffed, her hand having left my mouth to go into a pocket. "She's gonna fix me like she fixed…"

"Keep that name out of your mouth for now." The syringe jabbed into my neck and I forgot what I was going to say. Or who it was I'd been talking to. Was that a dream or something? Anyway, it was a sunny day, and I felt like I could use a nap…

_**-a-** _

"Dad, I'm going out," I called over my shoulder. The door clicked shut behind me, and I adjusted the fedora on my head to a jauntier angle. I often wondered if I was not wearing it to imitate _her_ — if she was wearing it, as I was, to cover up a scar that had made her who she was. But yes, she'd been the source of the idea. 

Grocery runs still made me feel weird. Glancing over my shoulder every block for a tail, staying sixteen feet from everyone purely out of reflex, the ever present hope that was also fear that I'd bump into Aleph's version of Annette…

It was not _exactly_ like my dream about school but it was very much like it. Apparently I had been through some anxiety inducing stuff lately. 

With a laugh at my newfound talent for understatement, I wondered what adventures might be forced upon me on my way to get eggs, milk, bread, and toilet paper. Was this what it had felt like to go outside when I ruled Brockton? 

In all likelihood it probably was. My concealed carry permit was taking its sweet time to come back from the South Jersey Department of Public Safety, but I was nevertheless carrying a small but ample pistol on my belt anyway. It seemed that Brockton was in no possible world a place to be caught unarmed. The saving grace was that caped crime was still very rare on Aleph altogether. Apparently a lot of heroes worked with this America's version of NASA, for some reason that didn't fully make sense to me. 

Oh well. As long as they found productive outlets, I presumably could too. If my powers ever came back. I wanted them to? But I also didn't want them to. No. That wasn't correct. I wanted to not want them to, but I couldn't help myself. 

The bigger question was what I'd do if they did. How I'd use them. I told Contessa that I'd do things differently — what I had meant was that I'd do the same things in pursuit of the same goals, but in different ways and for different reasons. The world had needed saving. It had needed someone with clear enough vision to give every drop of themselves to do that — or someone suicidal enough to not care. I wasn't sure which one I really fit under. I still wasn't, and I didn't care. As far as I could tell I was, in fact, just living on borrowed time, and I deserved it, really. 

It had also needed someone naive, someone whose preconceived notions about the nature of their world didn't prevent them from doing what I had done. This, at least, I was no longer capable of. I imagined I was now more like Contessa than she would willingly admit — I _only_ knew the game and its rules. Which, for the hundredth time, I thought might be an advantage when the cape scene here got its first Vikare. I could form a new Cauldron and…

And you know what? I could bury that thought. Deep. Shoot it in the head twice, render it impotent. That worked so well for other people, didn't it? But it was really not a thought I wanted to think. Moreover, I had a suspicious feeling that my continued health and welfare were contingent on choosing not to think it. 

The upscale neighborhood we'd been _dumped_ in (I wasn't resentful of the mercy I'd been shown, honest) was very walkable. I could get to the grocery store in a few minutes on foot, get most of my list very quickly, and spend the rest of my time window shopping for various delicacies I couldn't necessarily afford, or at the numerous specialty shops just up the road. Yes. That sounded like an excellent use of my time. 

I was, after all, normal now. 

_**-b-** _

I stood on a rooftop in what remained of Brockton Bay, the streets below still glowing faintly with trace particles. They flickered in the setting sun like tarnished gold. Too poetic by half for such massive destruction, I thought ruefully. 

I thought back to the last time I had been standing on this rooftop. The person I had spoken to. The events I had set in motion with my quest for approval, for recognition. I had used words like "glory" at the time. But being _thrown_ into Scion's maw by that person, escaping alive somehow — I no longer believed in glory. I wouldn't say I had been taught humility. Wasn't it a sign of empty pride to brag about how much humility you had? I'd always hated that, in church, as a kid. I had simply been taught that fire is hot and that you will get burned. 

Come to think of it, I'd hated that in church too. 

No. There were no lessons here. Not for me. Some of us were beyond reclamation. But with careful study of what was left of Earth-Bet, a world might be salvageable. "Dragon." I blinked the rapidly, sending out a burst transmission to the drones overhead. "I'm ready for pickup." 

It was a mere femtosecond, I reckoned, before she replied. "You've spent a while on that rooftop. Any particular reason why?" 

I growled under my breath. "You know why. Please don't be coy about it." 

"She made herself, Defiant. Her choices were her own." 

I sighed. "That is entirely the problem. Ours weren't. Not at the end." 

Dragon sounded sad, yet also bemused. It was unnerving to think that noticing this complex mixture of emotions would have been beyond me _before_ I began intensive cyborgification. What did that say about me, about humanity, about what most people thought of as losing it? 

"Welcome to the club. It's not a fun experience," she said. 

_**-c-** _

The Duchess steepled her fingers, leaning over the desk and looking intently at the Red Queen. Black hair cascaded over her thick-rimmed spectacles, and her unnaturally red lips quirked into a poison apple of a smile as she listened to the younger woman's plan. 

The Red Queen's eyes kept wandering, to her chest, or to the bookshelf behind her — carefully chosen titles for the occasion: _Paradise Lost_ , _The Master and Margarita, Nineteen Eighty Four, Dune_ and _Lolita_ , among others. The Duchess observed the young woman's reactions carefully, noticing the piqued interest, the indrawn breath of shock, the puzzlement at each title in turn. She smiled to herself. This was so easy, once you knew how. And the other woman would make things interesting, wouldn't she? 

"But once this is done, I'll be totally dependent on you to keep me safe. They'll never take me back. I'll have a kill order! I'm used to being betrayed, but…" The girl's eyes were plea enough. And how could she say no? 

"I lost my daughter in a car accident a few years ago. She was only twelve. I miss her every day, so I understand how you feel and why. We want the same things. Trust me when I tell you, I will take care of you as if you were my own." 

The Red Queen nodded submissively, bobbing her head. She brushed brown hair, which had been allowed to grow unkempt from stress, out of her eyes, and looked at the older woman. "Thank you," she said softly. The Duchess only smiled. 


	2. Images And Words: Another Day

**_-d-_ **

I came to, cold fury turning hot and uncoiling violently only to…only to not a  _ got damn thing _ . I was paralyzed, probably an effect of the chemical I'd been drugged with by...huh. I couldn't remember who had done that. Probably another effect of this admittedly quite complex cocktail in my system. 

I couldn't speak either. I could find words, so it was just fine motor paralysis. Very fine, as I could still breathe and move my tongue. I dared not use my power — pepper spray could get stuck inside me, ruining my life, God only knew what this would do. 

So I just made fuck you eyes at the chair in front of me, and the blonde hair tumbling over the back of it. 

Then, slowly, the chair turned around. Tattletale made "no, fuck  _ me _ " eyes back at me, a grin pulling up the corners of her mouth all Cheshire like. More grin than cat. It reminded me of the movie quote: "I simply am not there". 

And of course there was a cat. Black, to not fully buy into the cliché about supervillains. "This is Skitter. That's what I'm calling her," Tattletale said. "See? She's got a yellowish pattern over her eyes, like the mask, remember?" 

I did remember. I hated everything about this. I made that clear with my eyes. 

"You're mad, I get it. You don't want to be here. But like, seriously? Picking off the biggest villain in town in a futile attempt to make your city a better place? Telling yourself it's altruistic, when you just need that sweet dopamine hit of  _ meaning _ ? You went out today, with the idea that one of us was going to die and either way you were okay…it's all right, you can admit it."

I glared. My eyes pled the fifth, demanded a lawyer, and said" "fuck the police" all at once. She just smirked. Our gazes brushed against each other for a long moment, and again I felt like she was fucking with me. 

She broke the silence. "Do you know who you remind me of?" 

I tried to find the strength to speak, but only a growl emerged. That was more than I'd had before, so I took it for what it was worth. 

"I thought you'd pick up on that. You are so much like her. Back then. She grew, though. You didn't."

I growled more. 

" _ Very _ articulate. Bravo. Even Bitch uses people words. Sometimes." She laughed at her own joke. I hated her more than I thought possible, an exponentially growing fireball kudzu of hate that really kind of impressed me. She was the most self indulgent person I'd met since…

Since Emma died. This was not a comfortable interaction for me, is my point. 

"Have you looked in a mirror, lately?" Tattletale laughed sharply, mockingly. How did she know what I was thinking? Fuck. 

"No." My voice surprised me. It occurred to me that she was timing her…script, or whatever, to the effects of this drug I was on. 

"I had a friend make that for me. It's so very cool, don't you think?" 

I shook my head, refusing the bait. 

She pressed on anyway. "You don't have many friends, I bet." 

The issue with friends, I noted silently, was that they ended up doing shit like this to you. 

She nodded. "I look in a mirror, sometimes. Or I lie awake at night. And I think of a suicidal girl who found purpose, who learned that being a bully and a parasite wasn't all there was left to be. I think of the person who ran from Emma Barnes  _ to _ that girl. I don't understand why she did that, not to this day. And Sophia, I get  _ scared _ . What the three of us did to her…what the heroes and the  _ real _ villains helped with — we saved the world, you, I, and Emma. But it wasn't right."

I nodded numbly, listening to what seemed like a confession now. 

"During Gold Morning, she told me about the things you said to her when she let you out of prison. The person you thought you were, the person you thought you'd made. I have to live every day with the fact that _ I _ made her who she was.  _ I _ took away her other choices, and in return she took away mine. But you…" Tattletale regarded me with something very like disgust. 

"Yeah?" Ah. Defiance. The ol' quiver wasn't empty yet. 

"You still think you're the hero of your own story. You're still at the 'going undercover with the gang your telepathic best friend is part of' stage of your dramatic bullshit. Except," she licked her lips, smiled, and continued. "The telepath is  _ not _ your friend."

"Get to the point," I snarled. 

"Okay. I'll make it simple. I think she's still out there. I don't know how. I don't know where. I want to see her again, and I want to apologize for making it have to end the way it did."

I laughed. "How the fuck is this my problem, bitch?" 

Tattletale smiled at me. "Because the injection Imp gave you was also carrying nanites. They're programmed with a very specific purpose. I want you to find her and deliver that apology. If in three months you have not managed to find her, deliver it, and return to me, you will turn into a pretty red mist. Cranberry juice, more than pasta sauce."

I sputtered. "You're insane. There's no way."

Shs gave me a thumbs up. "Right on both counts. But you're enough like her that having an insane friend who's going mad with grief won't actually hurt. It might help. And you're also enough like her that you can pull it off. Somehow."

"I get why me. Revenge is easy. But why...this insane fixation on finding Khepri? She's dead. And if she isn't she probably needs to —" 

She held up a hand. "I would not finish that thought if I were you. But the answer is simple. Have you  _ been outside  _ lately? Everything ended at once, and everyone lost their agency, and no one's been able to begin anew. It really shows. She did this to us. I'm angry at her, if you must know. She knows what it's like to wish you hadn't survived. She knows what I felt. What you probably felt after Regent had his way with you."

Okay, that was a low shot. The truth was, I had wished I'd died. Taylor breaking me out had been the same feeling, only worse. And I didn't know if she knew that and wasn't saying it, but it seemed like her MO. I merely nodded. It was probably best to not tempt the crazy person, here. 

"A lack of purpose kills. It's what ate at him, you know. At Scion. Until one day –" she made an explosion sound, drawing her hands apart slowly. 

"Taylor won't give you a new purpose," I said. 

She nodded. "Taylor has been my purpose for a very long time. The fact that she's dead, or gone, or whatever she's chosen to be, hasn't changed that. But here's the thing. I'm mad at her, and I don't want to hurt her, so I'm not going to look for her myself. I'm staying here until she has my apology. I'm sending the apology to distract myself from how angry I am that she  _ left  _ us when we needed her…"

She paused, overcome with emotion. It occurred to me that Tattletale showing this kind of vulnerability in front of me was not merely an act. 

"Go on," I said as warmly as I could. 

She sniffled, and her eyes met mine. I could see now, how angry she was. It scared me a bit, the fire in her gaze. "And I'm using you to deliver my apology because either way, it makes me feel better. Either you don't change a bit and it's clear that I am angry with her and that I can't do anything worthwhile without her; or you change in the process of doing what no one else can do, and it's clear that there's a future for me without her, in which case it's okay."

I considered this. "You must have accounted for the possibility that she'll shoot the messenger." 

Tattletale nodded and grinned. The grin was truly empty this time, but I did not hear a  _ click _ behind it. "The medium is the message. So make it a good one." 

Blue light shimmered around me, and I fell. 

**_-a-_ **

The idea that had seized me as I began my walk earlier was now gripping me in feverish claws, shaking me, and demanding further attention. It was a very  _ Lisa _ idea, which made it attractive…and simultaneously made me want to bury it in the Bay like we'd done to Cherish. 

As I munched on a chocolate long john with lemon filling, a cold insight stabbed me in the kidneys.  _ I needed worthy opponents _ . But…

If I was going to really do this, I needed to be a hero. I needed to recognize that there was nothing of genuine altruism in Weaver — there had been more in Skitter, for God's sake. 

Khepri was not a person, or an identity, much less a hero. If I were being poetic I'd say a force of nature, but the truth was that Khepri was a  _ thing done to _ . Whether she was done to me or other people, she had been an external locus of control for the remaining goodness and potential of an entire planet, in the shape of a person. 

I felt like I was pushing shit uphill worse, now, though. A kind of dung beetle Sisyphus. I needed a purpose, and "mundane Contessa" was a hell of a one. 

_ Genuine altruism _ . This was so self-serving — rationalizations provided themselves! She hadn't said not to do good, or to use my skills and knowledge to help others. She'd even all but implied that I could not be contained, admitted defeat after a fashion. Maybe as long as she didn't see it… 

But she would. And she'd see into my heart. And a thing that wasn't her might be driving that day, a passenger at the wheel. And I'd be roadkill. 

I was attributing too much power to her. Too much initiative, too much awareness. It was maddening. 

I sat on a bench that I thought might be a bus stop, swinging my legs and people watching. I'd read the old classics when I first got here, slowly learning how to word again on King Arthur and Robin Hood and even this world's comic books. Superman, Batman, a thoroughly unrealistic insect hero by the name of Peter Parker. Movies: Star Wars, Indiana Jones. TV: Star Trek, Doctor Who. 

World War II documentaries. A copy of  _ Profiles In Courage  _ Annette From Aleph had lended me, which I recognized immediately as one that both Annettes had marked up and dog eared in the same way, somehow. Its newly tearstained and yellowed pages told me nothing I didn't know before. 

I had only ever known one genuine hero. And I had been twelve when she had died. I wasn't even sure that my childish mind at the time hadn't overlooked something — did she have some flaw, some self serving motive for everything? She had committed no great feats, rescued no cats from trees. Her total Endbringer participation count was exactly nil. 

Obviously. That was the point. The books had taught me that in the land of fiction, motive was everything, accomplishments were nothing. And if I was truly trying to unlearn everything that Skitter had learned (or that she'd come in with, or that she'd been right about — dear God, I was accepting a lower threshold of competence just to be a person I didn't recognize but could call good, what was this?!), fiction was as good a place to start as any. 

Did I want to be my mother? Was that all it had ever been? 

My head spun with questions. And a donut. I was getting hungry, actually — there was a pho place up by a bookstore near here, and I'd been meaning to check both out. 

I stood, walking toward the corner where I'd have to turn. Then I saw him — a tall, gaunt, almost skeletal man. A silhouette that I still had nightmares about. I froze, heart pounding. 

_ He waved _ .

I took a deep breath, took notice of a landmark to each of my cardinal directions (and potential weapons, exits)...and waves back. Thomas Calvert was not always Coil, not here, at least. Was he? This was my safe world, my home. 

_ Shit, was this actually Aleph Calvert?!  _

"I've seen you around a lot the last few days. Thought I might as well say hello." I cringed as my mind involuntarily appended the word "pet" to the end of his sentence. His voice was unmistakable. 

I swallowed, then croaked out "hi". 

His eyes widened. "Shit, you look like hell. What's wrong? Can I get you anything? Do you need me to call someone?" 

Christ. This really was an alternate universe. I laughed nervously. "Nah. You just reminded me of someone I knew once." 

He nodded, expression serious. "He must have done a number on you. That was a genuine flashback." 

I choked back a sob. "Yeah, he did." 

He frowned. "I can go."

Like a drowning fish, I leapt for the lifeline. I didn't care if there was a hook attached. A silent alarm in the back of my mind wondered if Coil had drawn Dinah or Lisa in this way. 

Weaver, or perhaps Skitter, chose to believe in goodness. 

"No. Join me for lunch." 

He fidgeted uncomfortably. "I think I'm old enough to be your dad."

I burst out laughing, remembering a dream I'd had once, about my dad and Coil. "No, not like that! Just a friendly chat. I'm new here. And I didn't even get your name."

He stuck out a hand. "Tom. Tom Piggott. Let me call my wife and tell her I'll be a bit with the groceries."

I didn't actually have any response to that. 

**_-c-_ **

I hit the ground in a shimmer of blue and a flurry of cussing, and reflexively went shadow. I skittered (ugh) into a corner, hiding behind a dumpster. The logo on the side read Fortress Autonomous Corp, Brockton, SJ. The phone number was, I shit you not, "Academy 64-369". This was definitely not the world I'd been in a minute ago. 

If I knew anything about Fortress as a company from other worlds, it was that it was not likely to be a company I wanted to be a customer of. And what was with the old school phone numbers? Why did they even have those where I'd come from in the first place? 

Putting these two facts together, I deduced that I did not want to stay here any longer than I had to. Anything that wasn't malicious was likely to be insane. 

But in three months insane malice was going to turn me into cranberry 7-Up. Compared to that, I could take the devil I didn't know and the crazy that didn't hate me. 

Collecting my wits and standing up, I emerged from the alley. A busy street met me, filled with cars that ran on what sounded like turbine engines (and some that made no sound at all, electric maybe?) — which hovered off the ground about a foot. I whistled.

I was just beginning to get a feel for the general geography, as best as I could tell from the crosswalk I was taking up, when I heard a low propeller sound. Probably a gasoline engine. I looked up. 

Of course it was an airship. "Jesus, Tattletale, what do you know that I don't? Why pick this world?" It occurred to me that she knew nothing, and had picked a world at random — but that fit my preconceptions too well to be a useful theory. I had to proceed as if everyone and everything here was an intentional threat to my safety. 

Which was normal for me. So I wasn't all that worried. But I needed to find out what my money was worth, get some kind of network access — if they even had computers, damn it. You know, the usual stuff when you're in a new uni- — okay, that sounded ridiculous. I wasn't  _ enjoying  _ this or anything. 

I made it across the street and went down a block or two, looking for capes or gang activity or anything of the kind. And I didn't see even the slightest sign of the dangers I was used to. Which meant, obviously, that the danger was hidden. 

I flagged an electric taxi, red instead of the customary yellow. The driver pulled to a smooth stop and opened the door. "Where to, lady?" 

Charming. Very noir. The whole thing reminded me of a show Chris and Dennis used to watch, called Fringe. I hated Fringe. "Well, see, here's the thing. I don't know where I'm actually…at."

He raised an eyebrow. "Really, lady." 

"Really, guy." The look on his face could have paid for its own cab ride. "Drunk as a skunk last couple nights, I don't even know if I have any money. Or my phone. Can I see your phone?" 

His puzzled expression told me what I needed to know. "There's a phone at the library. I can take you there, give you enough to make a call?" 

I nodded. "Thank you, sir." That sentence tasted  _ terrible _ . Sometimes survival was a real bitch. 

He accelerated, and I realized there weren't any seatbelts in this car. Great. "No problem, ma'am." 

We passed the ride in silence, and I observed the billboards. A Terminator 2 poster, weird — starring Lance Henriksen, okay, I could stay if I needed to. A Re-elect Romney poster. Apparently a third term, which meant no 22nd Amendment…I could live with that. A travel agency advertising vacations on Mars…the fuck?! Mars but no cell phones and like fuckin' black and white TV phone numbers? 

This was growing on me, and I hated it. 

"Should be able to make change with these for a phone call. Use the rest to buy yourself some food, okay?" He patted me on the shoulder, and I resisted the urge to palm spike his nose into his brain. He was just being friendly. Which was the problem, but whatever. 

I nodded assent, getting out and looking over the coins. Teddy Roosevelt, fifty cents. Lady Liberty, a dollar. They were wrapped in a five dollar bill, Neil Armstrong. That was a good sign. Something I understood. 

A motto: "Mind Your Own Business". I briefly considered staying despite the pressing red mist issue. That was way better than the other one. 

As I stood in front of the imposing stone staircase of the library, I stifled the sudden urge to slap my forehead. I didn't even know how phone numbers worked here, so 911 and 311 and 411 were out, as was my memorized BBPD number, Colin and Hana's personal phones, and so forth. Great. 

I was going to have to ask for help, wasn't I? 

  
  


**_-c-_ **

  
  
  


I wiped my face with a cloth towel attached to a roll. The library bathroom was marble, a spotless shade of gray. The Duchess, who I was beginning to form a theory on the identity of (one I didn't like at all), had instructed me to wait here for…well, she said I'd know who. Her "client", she said, had said to expect this person. 

I didn't like it one bit, and I was still tweaking a little. I told myself I merely wanted a cigarette, or that it was the accumulated anxiety of the last year and a half, or that I wanted to see my dad again. But I knew damn well what it was. I missed the —

The Dallon girl. The presence I was beginning to recognize as Shaper twitched at the memory, purring in excitement. No. 

**No** , I repeated. I was going to kick the habit. And build a new one. After all, Amelia Claire LaVere had no connection to Victoria Dallon. She'd never even  _ met _ her. 

Which didn't explain why I was afraid I'd hurt that person when I helped the Duchess conquer the survivors of Bet. Identity could be funny sometimes. 

Taking a deep breath and willing my hands to stop shaking, I stepped out of the ladies' room, walked to a microtelex terminal, sat down and began to catch up on the news. The Duchess had said technology here was an adjustment, but the adjustment I was making was one of wonder, not confusion. Pushbutton typewriter keys, a hardline telephone connection, a roll of dot matrix printer paper and the associated printer, and a microfilm display combined to approximate something much like an internet-capable desktop computer. The logo embossed on the terminal read Commodore Business Machines, a company that had been, to my knowledge, bought out by Dell in 1996 back on Bet. 

I idly wondered if they had a Dell Electronics here, as I pulled the daily news file off the main information line. The American liberation effort in the Bangla Desh free state was ongoing, as usual a meat grinder. South Africa, led by the Mandela-de Klerk government, was beginning talks to rejoin the British Commonwealth. Chicago was rioting, and it apparently hadn't stopped since Gold Morning. The Brooklyn Dodgers were beating the Brockton Wharf Rats 5-1 in the middle of the 6th. 

And now for what I was really interested in. The first cape in this world had been a man who claimed his name was Harold Finch, who triggered when an airship laden with explosives crashed into the Chrysler Building on September 11, 2002. There were a  _ few  _ others, none whose identities (in costume or out) I recognized, and few with powers I recognized.  _ That  _ meant either they were hiding their power set very well, or "Gimel", as I was calling it, didn't have Scion style shards. 

I couldn't decide which possibility was more intriguing. And of course the Duchess knew more than she was saying. I thought sometimes I was here, despite the consequences of my plans, despite the bright red lines I was crossing ( _ lipstick, the blood of a gangster across the sidewalk (just like her (but not enough)) _ ) , because I was into the thrill of discovery. This world was a mystery, the Duchess was a mystery (a beautiful and dangerous mystery  _ (utterly unlike her, who was so clear as to be opaque, who was devastating like golden sunlight _ ), the truth was —  _ Amelia _ was a mystery to me. I was finding her, here, among this world's secrets and plots.  _ (I didn't want to (I was afraid of her (she was her father's daughter (I was afraid of my father (I missed my father (around him i would not have to hide my thoughts in nested parentheticals, until they became incomprehensible to normal brains (which I didn't do, but had done))))) _

The Duchess cared for Amelia as her own, whatever that meant. That didn't mean I was ready to. 

**_-b-_ **

"Is anything you're seeing telling you Bet is salvageable?" Legend's masked face loomed on the monitor inside the Dragoncraft. Lines on his face spoke of stress — the last few months had been hard on everyone. 

Colin Wallis ran his fingers through his short-cropped hair and sighed. A steady diet of amphetamines and the various implants weren't holding back his stress levels, either. "Not as yet. I'm more at this point looking for anything of value that wasn't destroyed: information and so on, perhaps, more than anything else." 

Legend frowned. "And the radiation?" 

Colin brightened. "Less severe than we thought. You could probably grow crops here, shortly. Maybe a year or so, six months with tinkertech help. We could move people into areas that weren't hit as hard, rural ones. Iowa, for example. The Llano Estacado in the southwest is also a good area, albeit less arable."

Legend nodded. "Merely habitable land?" 

Colin shrugged. "That's why I'm searching for information. Same as any other Earth, except for what was built here. And most of that's gone." 

Dragon chimed in. "The important thing, I think, is the psychological effect that resettlement will have on most people. Speaking purely in economic and political terms, happy people are productive people."

Colin smiled. Dragon was still playing her role, selling her insights to the various leaders in charge of survival efforts as best she knew how. But he was beginning to feel genuine pride in her obvious concern for what she now thought of as "other people". 

The more like a machine he became, the more the machine he loved helped him be human. It was a paradox to be sure. 

Legend looked them both over, then nodded once. "Thank you. Keep up the good work until we issue a recall order. I'll pass on your recommendations to the Protectors and…others."

Colin knew others meant, chiefly, Cauldron. And while he was still uneasy about the entire concept…they were trying to help. Weren't they? 

"Thank you, Legend," Dragon said warmly. "We'll be in touch." 

Legend nodded. "Legend out." 

**_-a-_ **

Tom had offered to pay for my food, opting merely to drink ice water himself. I was aghast at the contrast between "Tom Piggott" and Coil. If, indeed, there existed a contrast. This was conceivably an elaborate trap. 

And I was conceivably having a coma dream. I'd been over that one a hundred times. And at least ten in the past year for "Lung splattered me all over the alley back in 2011". None of these washed. 

"So anyway," Tom continued in his engaging and entirely too personable way, "I took her last name."

I hadn't really been listening, truth be told. They'd studied under a Professor Rinke in Virginia, they'd met in class, it was either too cute by half, or just the way…fate worked. Or currents of events, or something. Ever since he said his last name, I'd been expecting the story, so it was merely a matter of tuning him out and filling in the blanks. 

I was forgetting how to interact with people. It needed to be fixed, but this was not how I'd imagined doing that. The question, of course, was what had I imagined? And it felt like, maybe, I had imagined one of these  _ other  _ Taylors doing it for me. The Taylors in name only, as I thought of them now. Skitter, Weaver, and Khepri. Or the Contessa-lite Taylor I had been dreaming up. 

None of those could see Tom Piggott for the gentle, kind, funny man he was. He began to laugh at another funny story he'd been telling me, and I realized with shame I hadn't been listening at all. 

I leaned forward and admitted as much. Again, I was taken aback as concern flickered across his face. "I'm sorry, Taylor. You've been through a lot, it feels like. And I'm just having all kinds of fun, but if you're not…"

I shook my head, grabbing onto the idea of another person who  _ cared _ like a starving kid for some cardboard pizza. Like Dinah for her…

No. Fuck metaphors. I was bonding with fucking  _ Coil _ the way I'd bonded with Lisa. 

"No, it's fine," I said. "Maybe it's time I told you some of my sordid tale." 

He nodded. "I'm listening."


	3. Images And Words: Take The Time

_**-a-** _

I had been telling my story for a half hour or so, now. Tom listened, attention rapt, pausing to smile (and catch himself in horror) at my dream about...well, Coil and Dad. I supposed the adjustment was rather hard, to realize that this was not fiction, to wonder if this was really in your nature, to not react as if it was laughably abstract, the nightmares of an idealistic child. 

"I'm sorry. That's what the note said."

He frowned. "That's all?" 

I shook my head, then nodded firmly. "Yes. And I thought, who does these things to kids? How did she grow up so fast? She was eleven, Tom, and you…you…I...we…"

My voice caught in my throat, and I alternated sobbing with trying to take a breath. He reached out his hand, touching mine gently, and said, "and you were only fourteen." 

My vision focused on a single point, dimming. My heart pounded in my ears. I could hear the chair I had been sitting in clattering to the floor, distantly. But I was still running.

_**-c-** _

I saw her sitting in a chair in the library, arms folded, waiting expectantly. _Panacea_. How, I didn't know. But the lines were simple enough to color in myself. The Undersiders had controlled portal technology _before_ , Panacea was, according to rumor, part of why _she_ had been made into…whatever she'd become. Like what Regent had done to me but worse. I still had nightmares about it, but unlike her, I hadn't responded by becoming one myself. Anyway, Panacea had at one point basically been an Undersider. 

So it was obvious. The three witches were fucking with me. But there was no spot I needed cleaned out, no matter what they thought. 

"Get to the point," I snarled.

Panacea looked up from her book, startled. "Huh, what? _Shadow Stalker?!_ " 

I laughed sharply. "Very funny, bitch. Tattletale sent me here, she knew you were here. What's your role in this bullshit?" 

She gasped. "How did she? How could she have? What the fuck?" 

I grabbed her by the collar, leaning in as menacingly as I could. I kept my peripheral vision alert for security, but I could probably get her out without a fuss. If I had to. "Don't play dumb. Now. Tell me everything." 

She stammered, then the dam broke. "If _tattletale_ is _working_ **withtheduchess** noonetoldme! I swear! Someone should have!" 

I looked at her, confused. Then a light went on in her scared little brain and she said, "oh, fuck. Unless she isn't. Never mind."

I wasn't that stupid. "Too late. Who's the Duchess?" 

She pointed to a mural behind me, a woman. Black glasses framed piercing eyes, red lips slyly set off white teeth, and a blue uniform and beret almost made me whistle, until…

"That looks way too much like Hebert to be any coincidence. What the fuck." 

Panacea looked puzzled. Didn't surprise me, she had been kinda giving off scatterbrained vibes since before she went to the Cage. What else was new? "You're right, now that you mention it," she said slowly. "But she's older. Like old enough to be Taylor's…"

We looked at each other as I waited for her to catch up to the whole alternate universe thing. She opened and closed her mouth a few times. "She said I reminded me of her daughter," Panacea said. 

"Shit," I said. 

_**-c-** _

"Daniel," I said to the wall. 

"Yes, ma'am?" the speaking tube replied from its brass mounting. 

"Have the stasis chamber prepared for a visit, please." 

"Right away, ma'am." Daniel LaVere was one of my best agents, despite his meek demeanor, ratlike face, and receding hairline. He'd been raised by an old comrade of mine, only a decade or so older than he, after his parents were killed in the revolution. Then the Red King had become useless to me, and I had taken his head. And his lieutenant, as well, suborning the Marche as my personal guard. 

In keeping with my personal theme, I often thought of him as the March Hare. It was silly, I knew, but as a child I had sworn to make my world better. Make it free. That's what the stories told me was possible, and growing up in those dark times I had _needed_ that. But now I needed to be _reminded_ of that even more than ever. So I kept the favorite of my stories, built my world around it. 

Sometimes heads went missing. But always for hope. That's what the terrorists hadn't understood, when they'd attacked our car. When they'd put my hope back in the box. 

I stepped into the stasis chamber control room, the moving walkway grinding to a halt as my thoughts returned to the present. The finest service Daniel had ever done me was to donate his genetic material, and to watch over her after she had ended up like this. As I told the Red Queen, lost. But not beyond recovery. 

I pressed my palm to a silver pad, and the door dilated. I saw her there, like Sleeping Beauty. Under glass. Eighteen, now. For six long years, I had repeated this ritual and promised her that soon her mother would make things right. 

The Red Queen had to earn the privilege, though. She could not serve me until she understood. 

"Taylor," I said. "Let me tell you a story." 

_Long ago and far away, in a kingdom where those who wore gray sat on thrones of gold and those who wore bright colors longed for bread, there lived a girl. She was six years old. What she wore isn't important, or what she ate. What's important is that she wasn't happy. Everyone in the kingdom in which she lived was always sad, always hopeless. Even her father, even the king. Dreams, you see, could not be bought, nor could they be shared equally. Either way led to nobody having any dreams at all._

_The girl pondered these things in her heart, one night, as she was lying in bed and trying very hard to sleep. Not like you are doing now, little owl. Just for a while. Although she wouldn't have minded, given how bad things were. And if she had known how bad they would get, she would have envied you._

_Anyway, the girl had fancied that a monster lived under her bed for some time. She knew, rationally, that it did not. Monsters weren't real. Not the kinds that lived under beds, at any rate. And even then there wasn't room. But she understood, at her young age, with her young ideas — you must remember that to grow old was to stop having ideas, in those days — that to_ _**dream** _ _meant to breed monsters. So she continued to imagine that there was one, in the hopes that someday one would appear._

_And that night it did. "I am the Destroyer, little one," its voice said in soft whispers. There was no sound at all, simply a pale green fairy light from beneath the bed. Yet it whispered all the same. The girl gasped, realizing that she had dreamed a very big monster into a very small space._

_"What do you destroy?" she squeaked, although more in surprise than anything. For she had dreamed this monster up, which meant she controlled it. "If you wanted to destroy me, you surely would have, so it must be that you destroy something else!" She felt at the time that this was very clever of her._

_"All things in their time," the voice replied. "But those who set themselves up as gods, false rulers, the proud and the lawful, those who cannot dream, those who would deny a child an apple or a mother a cooking fire, these are the easiest to destroy. There is one thing I cannot destroy, and that is a dream."_

_The girl smiled. "You are the monster I have been dreaming of. My world forbids dreams, makes food and fire hard to obtain. It is full of the proud and the lawful. I can see that my father and mother are chained under my world's yoke, even as they try their best to be good as they wish me to be. You can help me make things better!"_

_At the time, dearest Taylor, she was very pleased with herself. She would become more pleased with time, but the monster's next words took a long time for her to fully understand. "I can," he said. "For this is what I do. My siblings seek to make everything last forever, which leads to the kinds of sadness you describe. But I value dreams, and there is no dream like the child at the bottom of the stairs who wishes to climb to the top. You will get there, because your dream is the dream that things will be better with time. But only for a time. After all, nothing can be perfect forever. For if it could be, it would be, would it not?"_

_The girl thought this over. "I suppose it would not. But it is better for things to be perfect for even a short time, isn't it?"_

_The monster purred happily, or seemed to. It still wasn't a voice, just a seeming. "In order to help you," said the monster, "I will require something."_

_The girl nodded, and then, dearest Taylor, she made a mistake. "Anything," she said._

_The monster seemed to smile (how he did this when the girl was not under the bed to see the smile, she did not know), and then he spoke. "Six years of your life have been spent dreaming, little girl. I will make your dreams come true, and as I do so I will seem to be only a voice, as I am now. But when they are almost sure, I will take six years from another girl. For those years she will dream. And then when those years are over, I will take the form of that girl, and then I will be with you always as your dreams come true."_

_The girl was only six. She could only imagine how fun it would be for the monster to be her friend, another girl her age. Of course she agreed, little owl. Of course she did. It seemed like something out of her wildest dreams, after all. It was only when she began to love a man she could see fathering her children that she realized what was implied. What she had missed, how she had been misled._

_If she had not realized in time, dearest Taylor, your name would be Alice and you would have had a father, a man I once loved. But Taylor, your mother crushed her heart the moment she realized it. She gave up her dreams, and became intensely practical. She laid aside her love for this man, reduced him to a loyal servant, and used his genetic material to attempt to trick the monster._

_Whether the monster saw through this or not, she does not know. Whether it cares, she does not know. But the flesh and blood girl the woman thought of as her daughter was the girl who six years were taken from, by men in gray suits who_ _**refused** _ _to dream. Who could not be happy unless they hurt others._

_And on that day, Taylor, I found a new dream. I will dream the dream that destroys the destroyer._

"I need that dream to be you," I said. "If you can." I removed my hand from the glass, wiped my eyes, and walked out of the room. Daniel was waiting for me, hands clasped behind his back, eyes expectant. 

"Thank you, Daniel," I said. "For everything."

He smiled. "Of course, ma'am." 

_**-d-** _

I sat there in the dark for a long time after Sophia left, nursing a stiff drink, caressing my pistol with the other hand. Listening to the song, remembering the dreams we used to be. She and I had done such good, and it had been worth every cost we'd paid. There was no other way to hear the song without wanting to cry. 

I sat, thinking of six years that she had destroyed by finally achieving her original goal. Self destruction. I understood what it meant to hurt too much to go on – Sarah Livsey had certainly felt that way. But I'd been more creative. I thought she would have been, too. 

A familiar presence tickled the back of my memory. "You again," I said softly. 

Aisha squeezed my hand. "Of course. Always. Are you actually _here,_ or?" 

I nodded. "I try to be." 

She smiled. "Well, once you greeted me by singing _hello darkness my old friend_ , so I thought you were fairly lucid this time." 

"You did this for her," I said deliberately. It took effort, as I'd told her, to be present right now. 

Aisha nodded. "I try to do it for lots of people. Most of them are fairly okay as these things go, compared to you two goofballs." 

I sat up straight, just a bit. "Us two? Do you think I'm going away, like she did?" 

She chewed on her lower lip. "I hope not. I feel like there's as much song in there as passenger, but I don't know who the passenger is anymore."

I nodded. _Believes you have already merged with your agent, lalalalala…_ I winced. "God damn it. Involuntary power activation just now." 

"Bullshit?" 

I smiled at her. "I hope so. I don't see a lot of good info when I'm _here_ , these days." 

She considered. "So blaming you for what you did to Shadow Stalker isn't fair?" 

I did remember that. And I didn't know if it was because of why I'd done it or not. Taylor was the only one who kept me human anymore. "What did I do to Shadow Stalker?" At the alarmed look on her face, I shook my head and smiled. "No, I remember what happened just fine. I want to know what you think I did. Something wrong?" 

Aisha hesitated. "You didn't say anything about expecting Taylor to come back. I think she's alive, I really do, but…"

_If you didn't believe she was alive, Aisha will consider this wrongdoing on your part._ I sighed. More shit I already knew. "When I'm here, I hope she's alive but I know she probably isn't. Does that make sense?" 

Aisha nodded. "We all feel that way. And when you're not here?" 

I winced, this time from an uncomfortable truth rather than a half baked non-insight. "Probably the opposite. I lie pretty well either way. To everyone." 

"Even yourself." Aisha hummed a bit, thinking it over. "Do you think you were _here,_ when you were talking with Stalker? When you made up the plan? When you gave me the assignment?" 

"I don't know." 

She nodded. "Do you want to have been?" 

The song became a scream, and then faded away. "I don't know."

Her mouth formed a firm line. "The reason I'm asking is, you said your friend made the nanites so they would explode if Stalker didn't deliver the apology and return in three months. Did you want that to happen? Is that a lie?" 

I was too drunk to push through the brain fog, but I tried my best. Taylor would have wanted me to. "Um, nanites?" 

Aisha's face became ash, and I wondered for a moment if I had hallucinated the entire conversation. Then I forgot who I'd been talking to. 

The song returned, louder this time. More hopeful.


	4. Images And Words: Surrounded

_**-b-** _

Sunrise. The shores of a dead world glowed gold, rimmed with red and black as eyes with tears. Already native flora had begun to return. Nature was reclaiming her world. 

Dragon had seen similar things after wildfires in the American Southwest, and after Endbringer attacks everywhere. In Brockton after Leviathan, several species of particularly persistent weeds had returned almost before the casualties had been counted. 

If a machine could smile to itself at this thought, Dragon would have done so. And perhaps in some silicate way, she did. Then she continued into the present, performing her duties. These duties were twofold: first, to catalog all returning fauna and flora in the Florida Keys by 2359 hours tonight. Second, to be on guard against any potential threats. 

An alarm beeped, and Dragon felt a rush like adrenaline: additional memory unlocking and allocating itself to combat and remote sensing, APUs 3 and 4 in her lower equipment bay spinning up, autotargeting machine guns swiveling like the hairs on the back of a biological human's neck. 

"Colin," she spat. "Remind me not to invoke fucking Murphy. Bogey in this sector." 

"Copy that. You're moving to intercept?" 

She sighed, clearing her emotional cache of the frustration felt when a lover ignores one's honest feelings, no matter how delicate the crisis at hand. "Of course I'm moving to intercept. I'm about to start calling you Roger in bed." 

Colin laughed. "...Sorry. I'm not used to…this." 

Her heart warmed, and everything began to run closer to optimal specifications now that her main CPU was functioning at its fullest. "FLIR visual in three, two…hold on." 

She took in a breath, cycles of analysis and combat algorithms pausing for a mere jiffy as she observed the aircraft in front of her. It resembled nothing so much as an archaic P-38 Lightning, except that a large finial extended to the aft of the airframe from the support strut joining the two engines. From this strut descended a large engine, of unknown type, radiating an energy that would require further analysis with its own dedicated uptime, back at base. 

Quantum signatures were inconclusive, but. "It's not one of ours, Colin," she said. 

"Does it know we're here? Five minutes to weapons range. Stand by." 

"Inconclusive. Sound a general alert. Let me try to hail. Starting with Bet FCC civil frequencies."

"Roger that." 

Dragon put on her friendliest air, and let her mind wander in the direction of the strange plane. "Unidentified aircraft, this is Dragon speaking. I'm a representative of this world's Protectors, a parahuman civil agency. I'm not sure if you had any way of knowing, but this entire planet is restricted airspace at the moment." 

Colin chuckled. "A little wordy, don't you think?" 

"Cut the fucking chatter, Defiant," Dragon snapped. She regretted it immediately but they were _professionals_ and that cutting remark had been at _her_ expense, she was a diplomat and — sigh. Colin would understand, once he'd had time to think about it from her point of view. Right now there was work to do. 

Colin clicked his mic in response and said no more. 

"Moving to ku-band satellite. Unidentified aircraft you are in restricted airspace, do you read. Over." 

Again no response. "Colin, I'm close enough for visual. Banking to escort trajectory and…"

The aircraft was a bright lapis lazuli, shimmering with glitter particles that probably helped deflect any incoming EM waves. That probably explained a few things. On its fuselage and on each wing, there was an emblem: a white fist, angular and stylized. The aircraft was further marked in an alphabet she didn't recognize, and on the nose there was a marking like the face of a shark. Behind this there were several small markings, which after a zoom and a fraction of a second she recognized as white silhouettes: several F-16s or similar types, and about three MIGs. 

"Colin. Alternate earth craft. Presumed not friendly. I need reinforcements, how far out are you?" 

His voice was taut with stress and frustration. She knew what his barely concealed anger sounded like, and she was glad to find no trace of it. "Thirty seconds." 

"Copy. One more time." This time she repeated the previous hail verbatim, on a general shortwave frequency common to almost any radio technology she'd ever encountered. 

And this time, there came a response. A spiral ray emerged from the ship, glowing an angry red like a tear in space itself. As it got closer to her it grew wider and wider, until the outer rings of the spiral were large enough to encircle her body entirely. She yelped, banking tightly into an Immelman turn, and it missed her by a hair. 

The tree on her right, standing above the canopy a few hundred feet, one of the last remaining large trees surviving after Gold Morning in the Eastern United States, was not so lucky. It simply disappeared. No residue of it was detectable by any of her equipment, nor any energy transfer from its destruction. It was simply there one moment, as it had been for centuries, and gone the next. 

There was nothing here to conquer, nothing to take, nothing of value but memories and regrets. And yet the invasion had begun. 

_**-a-** _

Sunset. The only thing I regretted worse than my outburst was having _needed_ to lie to Tom. Of course I had not told him about the injunction to "cut ties" — I knew from the moment I clutched that tearstained and crumpled scrap of paper, so long ago, that cutting ties was a way of life for me now. But the _need_ to expedite this, this was unforgivable. It meant that I was alone, in a new and unfamiliar environment, with only myself to rely on, and only me for my father to rely on, and I did not yet control everything around me. 

I imagined that what Dinah would do for her candy paled in comparison to what I would do for this control. And I did not imagine, I knew, that those who have become addicted never really cease to be addicted to a substance, or an emotion, or a thought. I often had nightmares where I was the blue woman I barely remembered from the Khepri-state, a clenched fist crossed over my heart, a clenched fist on my shoulder. An entire world in my grip. Where I was her, where I was infuriated that someone had done what I did best: control. 

I sometimes wondered about this woman. Why did she feel so familiar? I had said something to break her control of her allies, and I couldn't remember what it was. Had I, Taylor Hebert, said it? Or had "Queen Administrator?" 

For everything I hated Contessa for having taken from me, including control, there was one thing I was glad was gone. My passenger. I wanted to control myself, not it. 

I sat on Annette from Aleph's couch, staring morosely into a warm cup of tea. The tea was not the same as my mother used to make, but it was tea my mother might have made. This was sufficient. 

I had run here, from loss of control to sufficient sympathy, after totally embarrassing myself in front of Co – in front of Tom Piggot, who was forever tainted by the actions of a man who wore his face, who was not him, who he could not possibly be reasonably blamed for the actions of. Who didn't deserve the Artist Formerly Known As Khepri's post-traumatic horseshit. Annette had listened, and silently gone to make tea. She had not spoken since. 

The knock on her house's front door changed all that. "Annette," I called in a voice hoarse with untamed and inexpressible rage. "Door," I said. The familiarity of this simple command threatened another flashback, but I held firm. Here I was just a big dumb owl, which was better than nothing. Here I was sort of maybe okay. 

"Got it," she said. The door clicked open, and a gentle breeze brought with it a black and slender shadow, coarse salt and pepper hair, and 

Before I really understood what was happening I had drawn, assumed a shooting stance, placed my finger on the trigger lightly, and acquired a sight picture of the monster who haunted my dreams. The monster who wasn't me, that is. "Annette, get back." I was shouting, but I didn't care. "You. Get on the ground and put your hands behind your head, now." 

Annette laughed lightly, dismissively, as if I were a disobedient and silly child. "Taylor, for God's sake. He's a friend of yours, he says, and he's _concerned_ about you." 

Tom Piggot ran his fingers through his hair awkwardly. "Never a dull moment, huh?" 

He gestured to Annette. "It's fine. She's done this before. But I didn't know she was packing heat! Damn!" 

I was filled with an effervescent fury, years of being talked down to and dismissed and ignored and being shoved in lockers and called a villain and forced to join the heroes and made into a demon I still hated and shot in the head and unceremoniously dumped in a world I couldn't stand and all for nothing and all for the dreams of little girls who didn't know any better and who were worse off 

_Because of me and my need for control_

Spilling over and flowing into one torrential command: "Coil. Hands on your head. Now." I was no longer listening to my senses, to my better angels. I was the passenger, and the passenger wasn't me, and I was powerless, and I held a gun, and 

"Taylor." He was pleading for his life, how cute. As if Dinah hadn't. As if he couldn't just drop this timeline when I –

A shot rang out, and I crashed back to myself. Tom crossed the room like a pouncing lion, and wrapped me in a bear hug. Annette took the gun from my limp hand, and dropped the mag. Then she cleared the chamber with a flick of her arm, and looked me in the eye. "Get the fuck out of my house," she said. 

Tom stroked my hair. He spoke soothingly. "You'll survive this, Taylor. You're all right. You can be all right." He handed Annette a card.

She looked at it. "Your number." 

He nodded. "Call me later if you want. I can help her, I promise." 

She shook her head. "Maybe. But she…I don't know you, but I know guns. I fought hard to get away from guns, and one goes off in my house? I can't help her. Won't." 

He nodded. Then we began to walk to his car, his arms supporting me as I neared adrenaline fueled collapse. Somewhere, a girl was sobbing, as a man who chose not to be Coil led her off to help her deal with having chosen to be Taylor. 

A cruel voice echoed in my mind. "What better option for the make believe queen?" 

_**-d-** _

Noon. She had woken, about five minutes ago, from nightmares into a hangover. Barking dogs outside her window quickly proved themselves to be only memories, rather than regrets come to gloat. She vomited cursorily, then stood, brushing her teeth. Trying to figure out where she'd seen the face in front of her. Listening to water run, louder than thoughts. But finally the dam broke, the current could no longer contain itself. 

"Query," Lisa Wilbourn said. "Who am I?" 

The girl in the mirror — ah, yes, that was Tattletale, she remembered now – smiled sadly and replied. "Inference. There are some things it is better not to know." 

Lisa nodded. "Agreement." 

Tattletale nodded. "Agreement." 

This ritual repeated for the fifth time this week, she began her day. Overhead, the faint whine of multiple aircraft was audible. But Inferencer ignored it. Inferencer had no purpose without Queen Administrator, and so it refused to think of anything else until they were synchronized again, in mind as well as space-time.

_**-c-** _

"So our working theory is that Tattletale knows nothing about you being here, and that the Big uh, Sister face person is Hebert's mom." I grimaced. 

Panacea nodded. "I think that sounds right." 

"Oh boy." I ran my fingers through my hair and sighed. "I guess she's, like, evil?" 

Panacea snorted. "You would know, wouldn't you?" 

I glared. "I'm not evil, I'm just a fucking jerk." 

She laughed. "Fair point." 

"Anyway, you work with her," I pouted. 

"Right, I work with her." 

Oh, yeah. How could I forget. "Right. The poster girl for having zero self awareness works with her, so of course you don't think she's evil. You wouldn't know, and besides, you work with her, so it doesn't matter!" 

She looked at the stumps of her fingers, eyes far away for a moment. "Do you try to be a good person, Shadow Stalker?" 

I snorted. "I try to be Shadow Stalker. Takes all my effort." 

"Hm." A smile tugged one corner of her mouth upward. "Maybe that's your problem." 

"Right, and you try to be good, so you are. Heard it before, anyway, moving on. What are you two actually working on?" 

She stammered, then hesitated, then spilled some really gross refried beans. "Um, taking over the other worlds, you know. Just stuff." 

I face-palmed with a loud smack. "This is why I don't try to be a good person." 

She rolled her eyes. "Anyway, what are you doing here?" 

I shrugged. "Not much, you know, the usual. Explosive nanites in my blood stream on a three month timer, I think. Unless Tattletale was lying, and unless I find…um…" Panacea's eyes widened as I tried to figure out how to say this. 

I figured most direct was easiest and best. I said her name. I needed help, after all. 

"But she's dead," Panacea said helpfully. 

"Yes. Which is why the crazy person putting nanite bombs in me and telling me to go find Taylor has resulted in me trying to go find Taylor. Worst case scenario, I don't find her and –" I mimicked Tattletale's explodey noise and hand thing. 

Panacea shook her head. "No, you Neanderthal. Worst case scenario we find _Khepri_ and get mastered and everyone dies." 

I blinked. "Wasn't that, like, what you were trying to accomplish anyway?" 

Panacea had the gall to be insulted by this. "No," she squealed angrily. "Everyone but here! I have family here, now. Friends. People who value me. The Duchess thinks of me as a daughter!" 

I smirked. "Damn, girl. You work fast." 

She growled. "Anyway. I can take some time off to help you, I guess. Give me your hand a second." 

I jerked back like I had touched a hot stove. "I've talked to Adamant, she told me all about what you did to her. No thanks." 

Her eyes flashed, then she had the decency to look away, regret plain on her face. "Is that what she's calling herself now? The Dallon girl." 

I nodded. "You didn't break it, so you didn't buy it. End of story, as far as I care." 

She sighed. "Fair enough. Often nanites and the like will have a biological base component, to ease subject integration. I could affect that —" 

I waved a hand. "And then you cut the red wire and the librarians kick you out for making a mess. No thanks. I think Tattletale is smarter than you are." 

She sniffed. "Fine then. Have it your way. Do you think Taylor is here? Do you know why Tattletale sent you here?" 

I shook my head. "I don't think she knows. But no." 

Panacea thought for a moment. "I don't want to tip the Duchess off, like, an alternate version of her daughter that's an X-class boogey uh, person? No way. Otherwise I'd ask her what she knew or could find out. But if she's not here on Gimel, then I know ways we could look elsewhere." 

I nodded. "Right, right. The whole dimensional invasion thing. Lead on, MacDuff." 

She ignored me, walking toward the library doors. I followed. I had no better ideas, which struck me as a very bad sign. 

_**-a-** _

"She'll come around," Tom Piggot said, obviously lying. I was not to be consoled so easily. 

"And you?" 

He laughed. "You missed. I'll be fine." 

I smiled. His good humor was infectious, but he had no idea what he was dealing with. "I need to go home, Tom. I need to see my father." 

He nodded. "Where is that?" 

I shook my head firmly. "Bus stop up here. I'll be fine." 

He sighed. "You sure?" 

I nodded. "Tom, listen. Against all odds I have to believe you care. I'm sorry about the whole thing, really. But I don't trust you." 

"You can't." He turned the steering wheel, and the car moved toward the bus stop under street lights. Their glow seemed too bright, without flies and moths to shade them. 

"I'm glad you realize that, Tom." I smiled at him. "Genuinely, I am." 

He nodded, and the car pulled to a stop. "It's no problem. But I hope you will. I walk home from work every night, past where we met. Let me know what's up sometime, okay?" 

I sighed. "No promises. But thank you."

He shrugged. "Good enough."

I got out of the car and shut the door behind me, the click of the latch somehow very final. I didn't want it to be, but I didn't know why. The "front step" to our second floor apartment was fine, actually, a welcome change. Concrete, steeper than I liked, but I let myself in. Dad had made hamburgers; the smell was intoxicating. 

There were always new chances available, it seemed. New hopes. I had thoroughly made an ass of myself, cut a tie I didn't want to cut. But Dad…Dad was himself, truly, for the first time in forever. And that meant maybe in time I could be me. I hadn't seen her since I was twelve. 

"Hi, dad," I said as we hugged. The TV was on, newscasters yammering in the background faintly. 

"Hey, kiddo," he said. 

Our moment was interrupted by the sounds of air raid sirens, and two or three sonic booms. The newscasters were replaced by urgent beeping: Aleph's emergency alert system. We looked toward the TV, still holding hands, and read the text as the robotic voice read it aloud. 

An invasion had begun. Oh well. I wasn't safe anywhere anyway. I looked at Dad and grinned. "You know what, dad?" 

"What," he asked, eyes worried.

"This is _not_ my fuckin' problem." 

He laughed. "I'm proud of you, Taylor. I just hope we're okay." 

No. We had to be. I would see to it, I knew it. And so, I realized, I had just lied to my dad. 

The more things changed, it seemed, the more my inability to control even my reactions to them remained a constant. 

But tomorrow was a new day. 


	5. Images And Words: Metropolis pt 1 (The Miracle)

_**-c-** _

I wandered the streets, in what appeared to me to be an aimless pattern. But I was following Amy (I had never been able to remember her name, and she would presumably forget mine when she went back to whatever fucked up nonsense she was after here, or I killed her in the war she'd apparently started, whichever came first), and Amy had some kind of pattern to her movement through the city. 

The fact that this pattern involved sampling a few of the quite excellent delis Gimel had to offer was not a problem for me. The large chunks of Muenster, ciabatta and capicola blocking my ability to speak (I couldn't be impolite, right?) might be, though. 

Amy, however, had foreseen this. She was more than happy to fill dead air, with what she already knew about the history of this world, what she wanted to know, how technology worked, and so on. It seemed that not every country here had this kind of quaint atompunk technology thing going on. Most were in the 21st century just like home, but America had, about July of 1945, undergone a massive tech leap that allowed them to win the war. 

President Long had entered it just the year prior, fighting on behalf of the Centrality. Yes. An alliance of European nations including Germany, Spain, and Imperial China as the ethnic sidekick. 

This was literally that stupid alternate timeline dorks like Veder salivated over where the fascists won, but they were kind of all right guys. It was absurd. And it pissed me off. 

Anyway, one result of the fascists winning was that America had ceased to exist as a country, being split between private business interests who ran everything like some kind of libertarian science fiction utopia (unless, I suspected, you were me or the LaBorn kids or Aegis or or _or_ ) on the one hand and the intelligence/RAND Corporation guys who had been responsible for the tech boost on the other. 

The Duchess was obviously one of those. I think that made her the good guys? This confused me, it made me think about politics and what was right, and thus altogether it pissed me off. 

Anyway, Amy had a secret project that she was going to help the Duchess with, one she was the key to. Having heard Adamant's horror stories, I didn't like the sound of that one bit, but she wasn't saying much about it. 

Oh, and she'd waited until we were leaving the deli to tell me, mouth full of delicious hoagie, that she'd known the invasion was due today before she ran into me. Simply killing her seemed more and more appealing as time went by. 

"So hey," I said, swallowing. "This whole history lesson is cool and all, but where are we going? Where's Taylor?" 

She shook her head. "You keep asking me that, Sophia, and the truth is I don't know. I'm basically wandering and hoping I can bump into one of the Duchess's contacts, maybe old Marche guys. They might know something we don't and be able to tell us without telling her." 

I sighed. "Well leave my brain to science and my body to the Heinz corporation, I guess." 

She grinned. "What, no raw materials? You don't wanna be…" her voice went low and "spooky movie". "The bride of Frankenstein!" 

I had to laugh. "Fuck you, but no." 

"Fuck me, you say." She wiggled her eyebrows at me. 

"God damn it, LaVere." This was gonna be a long day. 

_**-c-** _

I knelt by the locked box which held my daughter. Her shallow breath misted the crystal clear glass, and her eyes fluttered. REM sleep existed in the glass, I was told, but I didn't know. They didn't know. How could they? She slept, but did she dream? What did she dream of? 

_Who dreamed?_ The answer terrified me. The way I saw it, either possibility was equally terrible. One. My daughter dreamed, and when she woke she would find that I had started a war with the entire multiverse in an attempt to keep a demon from possessing her as a result of my Faustian bargain. By _distracting him. With a nuclear apocalypse._ The sheer chutzpah was almost moronic, but I had run out of schemes. She was the idealist I needed her to be. She would not be pleased. 

Nor, I suspected, would she be pleased to still be mentally and physically twelve, when her peers had grown up and moved on with their lives. 

Two. Abaddon had already won. He already possessed my daughter, body, mind, and soul. Thus the dreams inside the sleeping mind were merely jokes at my futile expense. 

Three: a miracle. My daughter was not possessed by anyone but herself, as I had taught her to be. Her ideals remained tempered with Taylor-will, something Daniel and I often joked was a sixth fundamental force of the universe. She dreamed, even now, the dream that would destroy the destroyer. She would either forgive me for being unfair to her or find a way to continue being the strong daughter I had raised without me. 

I had sold my soul to the devil as a child. I no longer prayed. But if I felt that I would be heard, I would have asked for a miracle. 

The speaker on the table next to me carried radio communications from all fronts simultaneously, in real time. Scout aircraft had engaged capes on Bet. There were casualties, none of them ours. An artificially intelligent combat mech had been earmarked for potential recovery. 

Aleph was already occupied, in the Western United States. Vortificers had opened over California, Oregon and Washington. Los Angeles had fallen without firing a shot. They'd already launched hypersonic transports eastward, toward Brockton Bay. Toward…

"Jabberwock," I said, leaning toward my voice activated lapel transmitter. Today it was in the shape of a rose. The usual owl was too much to bear. 

"Yes ma'am?" Jack Thornton responded quickly, astute as ever. Chief among my battlefield capes, he possessed a vorpal blade that could cut through anything without touching it, and the ability to compel or interrupt any parahuman ability he encountered to his benefit. I had given him a special task, one only he could do. 

"The records search. Get me an update." 

"Right away, ma'am. Stand by. Okay, birth records, that's a negative. You're there, she's not. Census records…just you. Residency, other records, hold...Brockton Bay, SJ. Eighteen. No birth record." 

I sucked in a breath I hadn't known I'd been holding. "...how?"

Jack laughed. "Recent immigrant, it seems. Hospital records indicate – our guy on the inside was very thorough – two bullet wounds to the head, no exit. Glancing fire, somehow. Close range. Arm amputated at the elbow."

My voice went tense, as I considered the methods I'd researched, from original ideas the Red King had had, to neutralize a para. "Immigrant." 

"Yes. Gold visa." 

I remembered the word that had caused me to slip, nearly brought my kingdom down around my ears, as bolts of blazing gold destroyed the city around me. _Mom_. I knew now why the destroying angel had passed me by, though in truth I had long suspected. "Jabberwock, new mission. Find her and bring her here. To my quarters. Do not harm her, not a scratch. Forty eight hours. No more." 

"Yes ma'am. Jabberwock out." I heard the roar of a rocket engine, and tuned back to the flowing reports. A tactical nuke, in New Brockton, Daleth. It was as yet unclear if it was one of ours or not. This was never a good sign. 

"I've found a solution to our problems, dearest Taylor. Just keep dreaming for a little bit more, okay? Please. For me." 

I prayed, but not to any god or spirit or demon. I prayed to Saint Leibowitz, from the books of my youth. And I kept vigil, as worlds burned for no reason other than that I wanted a few more hours to love my daughter. 

_**-a-** _

I slept fitfully, having realized halfway through dinner that I had left my pistol with Tom. Or rather, with Annette. With the woman I had begun to love, who had rejected me. For what, I couldn't tell. It certainly was not my rampant mental instability, or my penchant for violence, or my need to protect myself. I had told her of all these things. She knew more than Tom. I had sobbed in her arms and recounted the attempts to gasp for air, to spit out a plea for mercy, the feeling of the bullets hitting my forehead, the endless terror that I was really dead. She had reassured me: I was alive because I had chosen life, and as long as I continued to choose it nothing would be beyond me. 

Ah. Then it was simple. I had chosen to stop being the woman she admired, and to retreat to the comfort of having been Skitter once, and ashamed. She could not help me. Not like this. 

But she had my goddamn pistol. What a pickle. I slept, like I said, and woke to the news that Los Angeles was now enemy territory. The TV showed a picture of the flag they had raised, and I gasped. "Dad, that's her. The blue woman. It's them." 

He scrutinized the image. "We're being invaded by another universe?" 

I nodded. "And not a fun one. Dad, this is bad. I need to do something, please." 

He adjusted his glasses. "Last night this was, and I believe I'm quoting accurately here, not your fuckin' problem?" 

I sighed anxiously. "Dad, I know. I've put you through enough. But there's got to be something I can do." 

He thought for a moment. "Do you have special knowledge? Something actionable? They might be able to use it, if you did, but…you weren't _you_ , were you?" 

I avoided the question. Of course I didn't, but I could help. "Dad, if you let me help our new home when it's being invaded I can't say it'll be the last time, not honestly. I can say they need us, or just me, and they do. This is _bad_ , Dad. If I'm too much, I'll just leave once we're safe, I'll go to Canada or something, and I won't –"

He slammed his coffee mug on the table, so hard it broke. "Damn it, Taylor. You pulled a gun on someone for buying you dinner last night, now you're going to leave me alone in a world I hate as much as you do, all in the name of keeping me safe. I've wanted to keep you safe since I knew your mother was pregnant. I've oriented every conscious action around it, every failure has been because I was too broken myself to keep you together. You are, Taylor Anne-Rose Hebert, in the shape you are in because of me. Because I did not keep you safe. I did not talk to you, I did not make our home _feel_ like a home, I didn't fucking beat Alan's ass… _a world was destroyed because of me_."

He was crying. "And you're a god damned wreck, baby girl. You keep me awake at night, wondering if anyone's in there at all, wondering if the monster the woman in the hat told me you had become is in there. Wondering if I do anything because I want to, if your powers are really gone. Wondering how I can help you _not ruin what's left of your life_ with this PTSD you've got."

He got up and paced, and I merely watched. I was at his mercy and I was terrified. Because he was wrong. I had chosen to burn the world and destroy myself. It was easier than allowing my father to be honest with me. 

Well now I had to submit to my fate. Another world was burning, and it was _not_ my fuckin' problem. The man I had broken with my carelessness was. 

"My father, you know he was in a North Vietnamese prison camp, right?" 

I nodded meekly. "Six years." 

Dad slammed his palm on the table. "He got shot down in '77. He was liberated by _parahumans_. Do you even begin to understand?" 

"I do." I swallowed. "I think." 

"When I was eighteen he allowed me to see what this had done to him for the first time. We spoke about it, for hours, like you and I are doing now. A few weeks later, he pulled a gun on me when I tried to sneak in through a window after being out too late getting drunk with the guys. I almost got shot. Like your buddy Tom. What I'm saying is, you get this tendency to give your old man fits from me."

I laughed nervously. 

"What I'm also saying is that I've never seen anything like this. He could not have withstood even a _second_ of what you've been through. That's your mother in you, not us sad sack Heberts. All right? So listen. One grown-up to another. If you want to go fight in another dumb war and die, or trigger again, or come home with even worse trauma, then fine. You're an adult. You have my blessing."

I nodded, shaking my head to clear it. 

"But as a father, as _your_ father, I'm begging you. I will grovel if I have to, my pride is gone. _Be my daughter._ Let me protect you."

I swallowed. "Okay, dad. I'll stay." 

He broke down, then. I held him. 

Outside, bombs began to fall. I jumped, the house shook. The strong shoulders I had wrapped my arms around leaned on me, and I realized that this conversation had happened because he knew. He knew the war was that close, and he knew we both believed our lives no longer mattered. 

It was then that I chose to protect my dad. To be the hero my mother had chosen to be before me. It was then that I really truly took control. 

I decided that both of our lives mattered. I chose for us. I dragged him, half aware, down the shaking steps just as a cluster munition went off in the kitchen. 

A car pulled up, and Tom got out, wearing a vintage Army uniform. His wife was in the driver's seat, in the same olive green. Leaner than I'd last seen her, and definitely meaner. Also, well, you get the picture. He presented my pistol to me, grip first, with the mag firmly locked in place. Then he saluted, two fingers, boy scout style. 

I press checked the firearm, looking at him with an eyebrow raised. It was loaded, and the round I'd fired had even been replaced. "Tom," I said with a bemused glint in my eye. "What the fuck."

He shrugged. "I lied. Rinke wasn't a professor, he was a colonel. It's classified, you get it. Right?" 

I did get it, and I said as much. 

My dad just stood there, slackjawed, watching me adult _hard_. My shoulders squared up by themselves, I smiled, and I felt good. This was a miracle, I thought. I didn't deserve this. 

"Now what you may not believe," Emily Piggot said from inside the car, "is that we've been made aware the other side has a resistance movement. One of their leaders has defected from the Gimel unit she's been embedded with, and wants to see you." 

The rear door opened. I had believed the passenger seats to be empty, because of the tinted windows, but even if you'd told me I would never have believed Annette was inside. "Does the name Emma Barnes mean anything to you? She said it would." 

My heart leaped. Then it did a somersault. A fly was circling my head, at the rate of once per second almost exactly. 

"Dad." I looked at him. He looked at the fly, then at me. 

"You _have_ to go. I understand." He grinned. I grinned back. 

Then he looked at Annette. "Take care of her," he said. 

"I will," we both said at once. I closed the door behind us, and we were off. 

_**-d-** _

"Path to averting extinction event, 237 steps. Five less than before the nuke," I said under my breath. I sprinted down a corridor, continuing to run through my active paths. 

_Path to preventing integration with personal agent, yeah, yeah, I know._

_Path to finding a way to prevent or reduce other agent-subject integration issues, 3,016 steps. Just peachy._

_Path to keeping Khepri contained —_ _**what the fuck. What the fuck.** _

That was certainly the worst news I'd had all week, and there was a Gold Morning-scale war on. A nuclear weapon had been detonated right here in New Brockton, and _we still didn't know whose it was._ "We", in this instance, meant _no one_. Not the Protectors, not Cauldron, not me. And there were seven more inbound, from an MIRV. I was more scared of the girl. The first threat so dire we'd invented an X-class designation to describe her. The first human adversary I could not wipe the floor with. A scared, crying, non verbal sixteen year old in critical condition. 

The nukes were inbound fast, impact near the outlying military bases in ten, nine… 

I looked out the window of the room I'd just cleared, eyes widening. Outside, seven trails of golden fire roared toward the earth. But they were stopped by the wings of an angel. I would say our angel, but I knew it wasn't that simple. She wasn't anyone's angel. 

She was, of course, the Simurgh. And she flicked her wings lightly, as if shedding water. The warheads arced back toward whatever had fired them, gaining speed in the transaction. There was a distant _whump_ and I suspected that the Charlies, as we were calling them, were having as bad a day as we were. 

The issue with a free agent Endbringer, believe it or not, was not the Endbringer or its unclear allegiance. It was the angel on the angel's shoulder. 

They both turned to me and smiled, the Simurgh with a Mona Lisa in marble and the other with an impudent smirk. "Hiya," Tattletale said. Then she pointed, and the Simurgh went into a power dive, screaming toward a firefight on the ground below. 

_Path to tequila – you know what? Just pour yourself some, all right?_


	6. Images and Words: Metropolis Pt I: The Sleeper

_**-a- Taylor -a-** _

I took a few seconds to compose my thoughts, as Tom deftly sped the car up to seventy-five and hit a road that would lead us outside of town. In the sky, jet aircraft exchanged fire with propeller planes that had weird glows about them. The former were like mayflies, the latter like fireflies, and the fireflies were winning. The ground shook occasionally, mortar shells or similar. I could see dust clouds that faintly glowed on the horizon, and about these I dared not speculate. 

I took additional seconds to gather my bugs. It had been so long, and yet it was like riding a bike — no, it was like reading had been, when I had learned again. A cloud of various critters filled the passenger window I was seated next to, clinging to our vehicle to keep pace with it. 

"Look at that," Annette said somewhat sardonically. "You haven't unlearned a single thing."

I pointed to a specific bug, and I knew Annette would believe I was indicating the whole cloud. "That right there _is who I used to be._ It was taken from me. You have no idea how good it feels right now. To be in control." 

Tom raised an eyebrow, looking at me in the rear view mirror. 

"Anyway, you don't fucking get to talk first. I get to talk, and what I'm gonna say is this. _What the fuck is going on?_ That's not a question, by the way. All this has happened so fast, first we're friends and then we're not, and then there's some kind of war with the Moon Nazis, and now I'm off to…to Emma? Fuck you, but I am owed an explanation."

Annette pursed her lips. She waited for me to say something else, and then she spoke. "That man. You didn't tell him about me."

I bristled. " _That man_ is my father. And how do you know?" 

She smiled softly. "I suppose he would have been. And the answer, Taylor, is because you are a liar. You have, clearly, been lying to yourself since the day we met, if not longer. Lying to him by omission, if nothing else. You were sneaking away to share the things you owed _him_ with _me_. He would have wanted to know I exist, if only for the sake of being _informed._ You told Tom that you wanted to change. You told me it was about control. You hid Dinah's second injunction from him, and Danny from me."

I blinked. "You know him?" 

The car turned around a hairpin as we went up the foothills outside of town. "It's an alternate world, Taylor. Not a different one. I dated Danny briefly in college. He had a temper and a gun, and I refused to give him the meaning he needed. I couldn't, you know. Then I got my first apartment, moved out of the dorms. Was going to share it with him. Then there appeared, during one of his…his things, that you two do, a nine millimeter hole in my wall. I almost got evicted."

I swallowed. "So you hate guns." 

She nodded. "The way you should hate bugs. But you don't. You like it in hell. You like imagining that this is a coma dream, that you died, that you are being punished for your sins. You like imagining that you're just watching yourself repeat every unforced error you've ever made, because it absolves you."

I glared at her. "You're judgmental as fuck, thank you very much. How do I know I'm not?" 

Piggot harrumphed. "Because we care about you and there is no reason why we should," she said. 

Tom grinned. "You probably have a big imagination, if this is your coma dream, but I don't think you'd be able to imagine that." 

If anything, this only made the last few days make even less sense. I kept that to myself, though, and opted for another approach. "If this was a coma dream, Emma would decide my fate." 

Annette laughed softly. "Or if it wasn't." 

"You sure it's an Emma I'd know?" 

She nodded. "She was very insistent. I'm sure she'll explain. If you and her can't work together, our merry band of partisans and you _will_ part ways." 

I swallowed. "You didn't have to join Tom and Emily." 

She shook her head. "I'm joining you, not them. If you can stay." 

I nodded and just looked out the window. A small voice I thought was my conscience was insisting that this was it, final proof that this was a coma dream. And I liked listening. 

_**-c- Sophia -c-** _

After a few hours of this fruitless following Amy around and having no idea what was going on, I had had enough. I whirled on her and again, grabbed her by the collar – and slammed her against a wall. 

She raised a stumpy hand and smirked at me. "I wouldn't do that if I were you. I know sixty ways to turn you into a stain, right now, and none of them are your red wire thing." 

"You," I said carefully, "are a psychopath." I let go. 

She nodded. "Mhm. And _you_ , oh mighty jackass, queen of the jungle, are a cornered rat who has no idea what she's supposed to do. You're between a rock and a hard place, which is usual for you. And you kind of like it, which is even more usual for you. And you're letting people lead you, then lashing out at them for leading you."

I took a swing at her, rage having overwhelmed me (first time, honest), but she caught it easily. Holding my arm in place, she said "I got away with what I did to Vicky, you know. That's how I realized I'm a psychopath. I would never have had the courage to be stronger and faster than I used to be, back when the Siberian was chasing me, if I hadn't. And the thing of it is, no one followed me here because no one cares about me enough to even punish me. I haven't cared in a long time, and I don't plan to start now. Here, I'm very close to being in charge. _You_ are not, little girl."

I simply looked at her. 

"Killing me won't save anyone back home. You must know that. If you think you're one of the good ones, despite your flaws, Sophia, know this. We are on the same side, I am keeping you safe, and that makes you…well, whatever you think it makes you. I think it makes you like me."

I nodded. "Despite my flaws."

She smiled. "All right then."

I rubbed my wrist, and resolved not to hand it to her again. "Anyway, I'm just pissed off is all. There's no direction here, we aren't accomplishing anything, and I am tired of waiting for something to happen." 

She shrugged. "Then lead." 

Aw fuck. I totally should have seen that coming. 

_**-d- Lisa -d-** _

The bastards didn't see me coming. Blue uniforms scattered as wings formed blades, beaten here and there by the whirling air currents, vision obscured by our shadow. 

I was only me when I was with my friend. She allowed me to be me, because me didn't like to think. Me wasn't very good at that. 

Sim had been born _before_ thought. Perhaps she had considered it a worthy opponent, in her way. I let her do the thinking. I just clung to her back and helpfully offered suggestions on how a human might approach this situation, especially if that human was named Lisa Wilbourn.

_And we kicked ass._ I whooped and hollered as we cleaned their clocks, then she made the ruins of their tank into a swarm of killbots. These scampered off to kick more ass, and I smirked at the sheer chaos we were causing. 

I was fairly sure that it was probably illegal to keep an Endbringer for a pet, to put it mildly. But people were going to tell me no how, exactly? And I figured somebody probably knew. It wasn't a huge secret — or rather, it was — she had an apartment building all to herself up in FMJ. 

Hey, if worse came to worse I could always blame Inferencer. _She did it! Tattletale is a_ _ **bad fucking person**_ _and everyone knows it!_

I was not a healthy person. Come to think of it, neither were the Red Alert fuckheads I had just pulped. 

We began to walk across the battlefield as guys with assault rifles tried their best, and I hummed 99 Luftballoons. 

_**-c- Sophia -c-** _

I snapped my fingers. "I've got it. You're gonna _love_ this." 

Amy looked at me dubiously. "Am I?" 

I nodded. "So we're in a neighborhood controlled by a gang, right? Just like home." 

She winced at the last word. "That's one way of putting it." 

I grinned. "Ever need to know where the Empire was hiding something? You just beat up one of their goons." 

She shook her head. "I can't say I ever had that experience." 

"Victoria Dallon used to." 

She paled slightly. "Well, when you put it that way…"

I smirked. "I thought I could convince you. Watch this." 

I went shadow, my body taking the appearance of an oil slick in direct sunlight. I crouched down and then sprinted, finding a vantage point on a second story ledge. Then I waited. 

And then I waited. Hours seemed to tick by, my breath the only sound. The part I hated about ambushes, about stakeouts. It seemed to me that a lion, in its natural habitat on the savanna, must not have this problem, of being alone with its thoughts. It didn't have _thoughts_ the same, and that was…

That was irrelevant is what it fucking was. We were all prey, now. I could admit that because of what _she'd_ done. It was okay, in a sense. Knowing that you'd lost the argument. Nowhere to go but down. 

Which I did. Fucker looked like a garbageman, and if I had badly miscalculated and he was a cop, so much the better. "You," I snarled, pinning him to the ground as I unfurled my normal body again. "I need answers." 

He shook his head. "She sent you. I'm not telling you a damn thing." 

Amy stepped forward. "She did. Which is why I don't care what corp you're with. We need to know some things." 

It dawned on me that Amy had elided the part where her fascist mom didn't actually control anything. 

"I told you. Not telling you a damn thing. Calvert would have my head."

I gasped. Of course. I wonder, did he have the same…no. Too much information too fast. I was losing my ability to focus. 

She picked him up effortlessly in one hand, like Darth Vader or some shit with her entire grip on his throat. I swallowed. I was in real danger if I didn't find…

Would Taylor keep me safe from Amy? Also a ridiculous thought, but one that had merit. I put a pin in it. 

Amy spoke clearly and distinctly. "I am looking for a person named Taylor Hebert. Do you understand now?" 

The garbageman blanched. "Uh, I could make some calls, if I had a telephone…"

She shook her head. "If Calvert took her you wouldn't know. So what you're gonna do is this."

I preempted any bad plans she might have come up with and _led_. She did ask me to. "You're gonna take us to Calvert. All right, hot shot?" 

Amy looked at me. "Can you don't?" 

I shook my head. "Nope. I've tried." 

Then I realized that this was actually _the worst_ plan. 

_**-a- Taylor -a-** _

We rode in silence for longer than before, everyone suitably cowed by my rants, or something. I didn't really care. Bugs outside were beginning to harm visibility for Tom, so I pulled a few back. Then I turned on the reading light. I looked next to me, where Annette sat, her mouth drawn tight like a locked door. 

"What," I said flatly. 

"Bugs. Look at all of them. You never lost your power. You…how do I believe you? We used to be afraid it would come back, but was it ever gone?" 

I shook my head. "I don't know. I thought it had been." 

She laughed harshly. "And the woman, she asked you what you would have done differently. You implied your answer is why she let you live."

I nodded. 

"So we both know what it was?" 

I nodded. 

"I thought so." 

I sighed. "I want to do things differently. But nothing ever changes. I'm in the back seat of a car as a gang that also happens to be my friends drags me deeper into a conflict that is, apparently, even bigger than last time. I can't even drive! It doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. And you're going to have Emma, _fucking Emma,_ decide whether or not I'm okay?"

Tom spoke, hitting the brake on a mountain turn. We were now very high, and explosions could be seen in the distance. The sun was setting, a kind of ugly haze. Nuclear winter met the twilight after a storm. Not gold, but rust. "That's not what she said." 

"Well what did she say?" 

Tom chuckled. We pulled into a mountain tunnel, impossibly long and hazed with green. When we emerged, we were in an underground parking garage. "Well, let's let her explain. She's upstairs somewhere I think." 

I took a breath, looking around. "Tom, this thing is three stories, easy. What kind of scrappy resistance am I a part of, exactly?" 

He just laughed. 

_**-c- The Sleeper -c-** _

I opened my eyes, stretching and yawning. I found myself under glass, which was…disturbing. It was yet not the strangest thing my mother had made me endure, but then —

The accident. A whoosh, a bang, the car rolled, I saw stars, I slept — 

I was wrong to suspect a scheme, or a plot, or an undue fixation. Clearly I had been in intensive care, and she had had me moved to her workspace to monitor me…

Which implied a coma. I knocked on the glass, my throat dry. She was, as usual, intently busy with something else…administration, most likely. I did not want to administrate, when I grew older. It distracted her from the real issues those in her life faced, and the truth was I saw why. How could I avoid that trap, if I took on that duty? 

I knocked again. She rushed over to my…enclosure, a surprised expression slowly giving way to the certainty that all this was her idea. 

There was a hiss. The lid of my enclosure lifted, and the first words that greeted me were as disturbing as anything she'd ever said to me. 

"Who's there?" 

I laughed. "Mother, it's me. I've had the craziest dream, all about…"

Her eyes were very wide, then very solemn. "But if you're…Taylor, I've made a terrible mistake. Please forgive me." 

I swallowed. "Mother, it's fine. I'm sure it can be fixed. I deduced I was in a coma, I don't care how long. We're okay, right?" 

A nearby explosion shook the room. "No, dear, we aren't." 

Oh. "Neither was the girl in my dream. Mother, what happened?" 

She laughed, manic and desperate. "I made a deal with the devil. He gets paid either way, you know?" 

I did not. I'd seen her like this before, and it was usually explained, but I didn't think it would be as easy this time. I touched her hand, not too forcefully. Willing my eyes to not betray that I was very much a scared child, but instead the adult in the room. The guiding light. The source of comfort. "How long was I out," I asked. And after deliberation, the second question was phrased thus: "And what did you do?" 

She told me. 

_**-c- Amy -c-** _

I was very, very tired of these shenanigans. I had told Sophia to lead out of frustration — there was no doubt in my mind that she would lead as well as I had been doing. Which is to say, not at all. In truth, I was as much a fish out of water as she was. The invasion had been being planned since before I found my way to…Gimel, I guess? And it would continue to go forth with or without me. The promises made were those of acceptance, not of any frontline responsibility for killing those who had not accepted me. There was no leadership, no inheritance of territory in return. Merely that I accept "The Duchess" and be accepted as well. 

So you might imagine that I was merely being asked to play lapdog, court follower and yes woman for a strong female ego. You might note that this suited me just fine. You'd not be wrong. 

But I was finding that Sophia was scratching that ugly itch and making me confront just how much any of my "dominant" partners had ever known what they were doing, or had ever been in control of their own lives. Not that I thought of Sophia this way, but it was a way of thinking. And after a time you see all interactions through such filters, if you come to rely on them enough. 

But Sophia was also a fish out of water. Someone had exploited her and dumped her here with a vague mission, without any explanation — I was to tend to a young daughter of my employer, she was to find Tay — _oh fuck._ Okay, all right, that made sense. Two Taylors. Interesting. 

We were in the same boat. Letting her find out that it was leaky and the till was shot was fine by me. It was infuriating, then, how well she was handling it. 

Never mind that we didn't know if "Thomas Calvert" had any powers at all, if he was also a manipulative sadist, or anything of the kind. She was taking us to someone who might know what direction she needed to go in. 

The point is, the fact that I was more sure of the hot headed kid who might have done a murder or two than I was of the broken woman who had kindled an interdimensional inferno was telling. Very telling. And I hated it. 

I broke the silence. "So Calvert, he's like…the CEO of this neighborhood or something. It's not entirely clear." 

The garbageman, who we had learned was a policeman instead, or some form of "private security", spoke up, voice white hot with resentment. "You guys from occupied territory or what?" 

"Mmm, something like that," Sophia said. 

At any rate he ignored her. "It's not like that at all, is what I'm saying. The sovcorp is community owned. We all have a stake. Our currency is shares. It's a damn sight better than the old royalty's crazy get, with her face all over everything." 

I nodded. "She's a piece of work all right. But aren't we all?" 

He harrumphed. "No. No we are not. Anyway, currency goes down and Calvert loses his job. She can just hold on to hers."

An air raid siren went off, screaming hoarsely with grief and rage and confusion, I felt, most of all. "See, that's entirely my point." The man laughed bitterly. "All going to shit because an idiot with a chip on her shoulder got…what, voted in? But we're the terrorists." 

I nodded absently. Politics were Carol's thing, not mine. "How much longer?" 

He opened the door to a cramped outbuilding made of corrugated tin. Inside, a three dimensional spiral of light rose into the air about six feet. The walls were cramped, and it stunk. My money said it was an old outhouse they'd reused. "This leads to where, exactly?" I narrowed my eyes. 

"It's what we have. It's also the last place secpo would look. It's a vortificer, which I think you recognized — leads directly to Fortress HQ." 

Sophia spoke up. "And this…Fortress. It's a resistance _and_ a sovereign, uh, corporation?" 

He nodded. 

She made a face. "Politics on your world is dumb." 

He grinned. "It's dumb everywhere. We own it." 

I had to give him that. "All right then. Let's get going." I stepped into the coil before he could say anything, and everything went red.


	7. Images And Words: Under A Glass Moon

[MEDIA=youtube]JEKTNtmKZEw[/MEDIA]

_**-c- Taylor -c-** _

I stepped out of the car, hand warily resting on the grip of my concealed pistol. Tom had given it back to me. He wasn't Coil. But why did I feel like he wasn't someone I could trust? 

_Oh let me count the ways._ I'd met him a week ago, he set all my carefully placed alarms off — the fact that he was kind and considerate and genuinely wanted to know about me had been enough, but that was beside the point — he was THOMAS CALVERT HELLO HI — I had gotten into his car and traveled to a secondary location — if you told me that secondary location was an unused Endbringer shelter I would not have batted an eye —

I took a deep breath. Tom looked at me for a moment. "You all right?" 

I sighed. "Yes." 

He smiled. "You feel at home. The bugs are already inside I gather?" 

I nodded. They were forming a picture, my good old flies on the wall. Raw, unfocused, like a child waking from a coma dream. Auditory signals were yet to follow, slowly, lest I give myself a migraine. "Roughly five hundred personnel across…I want to say five or six floors, easily." 

He smiled. "Fast work. It turns out you weren't lying about your capabilities." 

I sighed, rolling my shoulders. "You _used_ me." 

Annette was stern. "No. You used me. I am not your mother. You used me to escape your living parent, and Tom cared about you. He told me what was going on after he picked you up, when the TV broadcasts went out. It didn't enter his mind to 'use' you, as you put it, until mushroom clouds started being seen on the horizon. Our sources say it is not safe for you to be…where you were."

I sighed. "Brockton?" 

"Aleph," she said sourly. 

I breathed in sharply, taking back the sigh as things cycled from bad to worse and round again. "I need to be in control, Annette. You said so yourself. Why do you think you're safe with me, wherever we are, if I don't feel safe with you?" 

She smiled. "I don't need to be safe. And you don't need to be in control. You need to be trusted, and you have my conditional trust." 

"And mine." Tom smiled. "If you expect me to tell you everything, well...I am going to let Emma choose how much to tell you. But I will tell you this. I don't have the powers your Tom Piggot had. Or any at all. I do use Emily's name, privately, and any property I own on Aleph is under Tom Piggot. Here, I'm Tom Calvert."

Hornets buzzed up an air duct, toward Tom. They spiraled into shape in front of him, and they spoke for me.

_You lied._

He frowned. "I am Emily's. I took her name. I meant it. It wasn't the full truth, because we had _just met_." 

I knew how Rachel felt now. The swarm advanced, heat pulsing in my ears. _YOU KNEW WHAT I WAS._

"You told me what you were. An honest person trying to do better. That's why you're here." 

_I CAN'T TRUST YOU. TOO MUCH HAS HAPPENED._

I found my voice again. It was raw. "This is why I didn't tell you what else Dinah told me. Cut ties, she said. There were two scraps of paper, Tom. I carry them in my wallet. This is why. Would you like to see?" 

Annette rubbed my shoulders, reminding me of Imp in a way that, appropriately, I couldn't quite place. 

It's safe to say that I was _trying,_ honestly, to hold back my capacity for violence and my resentment of this thing that I had become. Trying not to blame people who had no reason to trust me _before_ I opened my mouth, before I "escalated" the situation into one I could conceivably control. And in retrospect it's not as if they weren't trying equally hard. Which makes what happened next even more shameful, although I'm told all is forgiven and everyone who was there laughs about it when it comes up. Even me, politely. 

What happened was this: I was beginning to calm down. The hornets were beginning to disperse. The elevator opened with a ding. A small, enclosed, metal space disgorged a person. The person was a sashay of ginger confidence, a torrent of crimson surety, she was a gush of shame from the bowels of memory. The words from her mouth condemned me, the die was cast, I could do no other, and she said, 

" _Some_ people change, Taylor." 

Emma Barnes was, if anything, more haughty and beautiful than I had ever known her to be. She was also correct. These two things were connected. And I hated it. 

The bees didn't know anything about what I was feeling. I didn't think they did, anyway. If they did, the human capes at the end did, and that was very hard to think about. The bees did know that they needed to sting to protect the queen. They moved into position, hovered menacingly, unable to commit. I wasn't sure why. 

Emma smirked, maddeningly. "Go on. Get revenge. You don't know a damn thing about me, anymore. But do it. I'm a bad person, right?" 

The bees retreated briefly. "So am I," I said softly. 

She smiled. "I'm not saying I'm not. I'm saying that being more is a choice, _non_?" 

My voice broke. "What happened to us?" 

She showed no emotion. "We were kids. Then we weren't. I wanted to kill myself. I didn't have the balls, you know. So dad and Zoe and whatever all evacuated, God only knows where they are now. I stayed behind. Hoping those rays of light would split my skull. End it, you know? I'm sure I wasn't the only one. Lots of people had a part in making that world so bad. Lots of people made the local _warlord_ trigger."

I nodded, listening as Emma continued. "So then, like, Scion hovers outside my window. I'm staring into his golden glowing dipshit eyes and begging him hoarsely to do what I won't, like, I'd always wanted Sophia to, but he would handle it now that she was…where was she?" 

"With me. On the front." This manic energy was uncomfortably familiar. 

"Right. So he just cocks his head, points his finger, _blaow_. I'm here. I wondered if I died, or if he'd transported me here, or what. Then I saw what your mom did to the place, and I can't fucking _escape you_ …" She laughed. "But you don't even want to escape either of us. You held a world in the palm of your hand and they tell me you want more than anything for me to tell you it's all right. That much power, just to want…not me. The memory you've made of me. To let you off."

"Did Annette say that?" 

Annette shrugged. "Not as such, no. I was texting her on the way up here. I didn't put it like that." 

"I didn't either, until now." I didn't want Emma to make sense. Not now, not like this. "I don't think I need you to 'let me off'." 

Emma smirked again. "I won't. I had to walk back from being suicidal enough that I don't even know if my family is all right. You left your dad for...a fight you knew nothing about. You can do better than this. _I've always known you can_."

Unrepentant, then. I should have expected that. "I made my city better. You made my life worse. Don't get self righteous with me." 

"You made my home unlivable. And I do mean my home. Zoe blamed me for what happened to you. We didn't connect the Skitter thing until you left for the Wards. My city got worse, and then it kept getting worse, and I couldn't remember what it was like for my hurt to not revolve around you."

"That makes two of us," I said softly, scuffing the floor with my foot. 

She ignored me, in typical fashion. "So with you gone I had to ask myself, why? What had been the goal with anything? And I think we decided, the therapists and what not, that I had been grieving _her"_ — she waved generally at Annette — "just as much. Probably some weird mental shit, too. It all went up at once, and I got _help_ and I got _through. You didn't have help_. You didn't want it. You wanted control." 

"I did. Her name was Lisa."

She wrinkled her brow. "The girl your dad thought was Tattletale?" 

"Correctly. She was. Is. She's maybe dead, I don't know. She helped. Not much, but some." 

"If she helped, why did you join the Wards?" 

"Come on, Emma. I think that question answers itself." 

She nodded. "Fair." 

I smiled cruelly. "If you were so fixed up and all, why did you try to commit suicide?" 

She didn't even notice the bait. "I think for the same reason that you think you're trying to do better but you just tried to kill your only friend, with bugs."

I swallowed. "Shit. You got me there." 

It was at this point that I noticed two more figures coming up a back stairwell. One a white girl, my age and height, brown hair. A bug landed on her shoulder and immediately died, but I recognized Panacea anywhere. The second, black, a little shorter, curly black hair — I dared not admit it to myself but it _was_ her, somehow. A massive conspiracy to bring all these people to me on the brink of a War of the Worlds. To condemn me, naturally, to remind me that my coma dream was hell, because second chances were from a children's story…

Or perhaps they were for those with the power to choose them. Like Emma. 

_**-c- Sophia -c-** _

"Sir!" Our prisoner (escort? I wasn't keeping track anymore, really) assumed a military bearing as if he were born that way and just pretended to be a gruff shit. Maybe it was the kidnapping, I don't know. "Two here to see you, sir. I can't tell if they're my prisoners or not. They were very…insistent."

A man who looked very much like Thomas Calvert (nah, couldn't be) smartly returned our overly political Uber driver's salute. "It's fine. I'll take it from here." (Aw fuck, it totally was.) 

Then I saw her. My heart skipped with relief. I had never been so happy to see _Hebert,_ and it was a disconcerting feeling, let me tell you. I wasn't out of the damn woods yet, though. "I'll take it from here, actually. Excuse me, but what the fuck? Hebert? How?!" 

She narrowed her eyes at me, typically enough. "I could ask you the same. But I won't. Your little toady is tearing me a new asshole, in complete ignorance of the size of her own. So it's a normal Tuesday." 

I sighed. "Never change, Hebert. You goddamn asshole. You saved the world, you did earn a break from the whole, like, decent people thing." 

Emma _eeped_. "Toady? Also what the fuck? _Never change_?" 

"Some people can. Others can't. Very few ask if they should." I paused. "Also how the fuck are you not dead?" 

She sighed. "Long story." 

I scoffed. "I got that much. Tell it later, I guess." 

"The worst person in the room agrees with me? Seriously?" 

I just laughed at Taylor. "I do not in fact agree with you. I'm just saying. Emma can change, including not being dead. You're just…you. Always. Unaffected, because there's something wrong with you. But we fought together, Emma did not. Being not dead doesn't change that." 

She looked very confused. "There's something wrong with me, and that's…good? Or is it bad?" 

I shrugged. "You always said you didn't care what I thought of you. Why admit you kinda do, now?" 

She nodded. "It is what it is, you mean." 

I wasn't sure myself. But that sounded right. 

A woman who looked a lot like the Duchess began to clap. The noise was what drew my notice — there was a lot going on, in my defense. "I don't know who you are, but thank you. I was beginning to think we needed to draw her a picture." 

"You're the Duchess." I glared at her. "Thanks for blowing up my homeworld, by the way." 

She laughed, a musical sound that was quite warm. "Hardly. I'm from Aleph. Taylor and I have been…acquainted, although I only got to know her the last week or so." 

I didn't understand at all what was even happening anymore. "I know that feeling. So he's from —" I indicated Thomas Calvert. 

"Around, basically. Tom Piggot. Nice to meet you." 

I spit took, and Annette rolled her eyes. He grinned. "What? She probably mistook me for someone else, and it was funny! Look at her!" 

Taylor sighed. "Yes Tom, because it was _so funny_ when I 'mistook you for someone else' and almost shot you." 

Um. "Hey, I'd shoot this asshole for thinking he's funny, so, props there, but…why would you need to shoot Director Calvert on sight like that?" 

She looked at me, then she waved a hand. "Long story. Forget it."

_OKAY THEN._ "So anyway, listen. I don't mean to interrupt, but if we're all done hugging it out, I need to get Taylor back to Dalet." 

Her eyes narrowed again. "You…what?" 

"Oh, long story." I smirked. "I got teleported here, and I have nanites in me that are kind of…explosive? It's not very clear yet. I basically got drafted to find you?" 

She glared. "By who?" 

I shrugged. "Stay here and don't find out?" 

"Fine by me." 

I blanched a bit at that. Wrong approach entirely. "Tattletale really misses you?" 

She considered. "Assuming you're not lying, noted. But you want to be stuck with me _why_?" 

I shrugged. "Safer than dying." 

She nodded. "I see. Tom, can you get us back?" 

He looked us over. "Why?" 

Amy sighed demonstratively. I nudged her ribs. "Shut the fuck up, Amy, I got this." 

She snorted and rolled her eyes. 

Taylor interjected. "Tom. If she's not lying then I have a good shot at being really happy for once. If she's lying then I'm still stuck with someone who, for all their hatred and violence and resentment, has never lied to me or manipulated me. I'm going." 

I raised an eyebrow. "Taylor, what the fuck is wrong with…no, nope. Never mind. Forget I asked." 

He chuckled. "I guess I can. We're a little bit short-staffed, what with the whole ongoing war, but if you guys need to be back, I will do that as a favor to Taylor. I'm sorry we couldn't help you more." 

Annette glared at Taylor, and I thought she was actually angry. "You will write. Or visit." 

Taylor nodded. "I don't know what else to do. You guys aren't happy with me, you could be. I'm not happy with me. You don't need me for your war, I need to leave." 

"Two steps forward, six steps back gang?" Amy grinned. 

"At least we're going forward sometimes." I sighed. "You're all stupid." 

Emma sputtered. "Really? You're just leaving me? Sophia, we didn't even get to…"

I looked her in the eye. "I heard you tell Taylor people grow up and move on."

She nodded. "I see how it is, then." 

I sighed. "It isn't anything. I'm sure you all thought this chance meeting would leave us wrapped up in a neat little bow but that is not how anything _ever_ fucking works. Sometimes things, people, they just are, all right? And I want to live. So like Taylor said, the devil I know."

She nodded again. "All right. Commander Calvert, I await your orders." 

He looked at her with concern in his eyes. "Take five for now. You all have been through a lot." 

She saluted. "Aye aye, sir." 

He looked at me and Amy, who had been joined by Taylor, moving away from Emma — and, I noted, further still from Annette. "Give me a minute to get things ready and we'll get you on your way." 

_**-d- Lisa -d-** _

We circled high over the battlefield, FMJ defended. For now. Well enough, anyway — the invaders had been cleared out, mostly due to those nukes. They'd doubtless be back, but my gal pal and I, we'd handle it, right? 

As if in answer to my musings, the song emerged into a fanfare. I grinned. "We got 'em on the run, didn't we, old girl?" 

The song changed. Bassoons, low and soft, but menacing. Like…bugs? 

Then the same fanfare, played again, on a flute. 

I grinned so wide my face hurt. "We found her? She's alive?" 

The answer to my question was deferred. Instead, regularly scheduled darksynth music returned, a maddening threnody that was like if elevator music had too much Monster. It made me want to kill someone, left me with unanswered questions, and did nothing for my sleep deprived agitation. 

I was beginning to realize that Taylor couldn't help either. But she could bear the song with me, perhaps. And that would be enough, wouldn't it? 

_**-c- Also Taylor -c-** _

I hid in a storage locker, like the girl from my dream. I could hear Mr Lavere calling to me, voice filled with genuine concern. I was betraying everyone, I knew. But _that_ was not my mother. She had lost herself in grief, and I could not bring her back. Mr Lavere only knew how to do what she said. Mother was like that. She would take me from myself, make me her, and nothing would be left of either of us in the exchange. 

I should be an adult. I was, actually. I was legally eighteen. _Like the girl from my dream._ Yet my body was twelve. My mind, as well. It was like a bad anime. Yeesh. 

I declined further pursuit of that train of thought. I instead turned my attention to more immediate concerns, like survival. I knew there was a resistance, but there were a thousand reasons I couldn't trust them. The six year coma, for example. One of the few things in my life not my psychotic mother's fault. 

Another potential consideration was that someone, really, ought to stop the actual demon that was trying to take over the world, and also my body. But I couldn't escape him, yet, let alone stop him. 

I pulled out a sketchpad, and doodled absently. I had taken the habit up in early childhood. Perhaps as a genuine artistic expression, perhaps as a defiant reaction to my realization that I was, like the books on my mother's shelf, merely another ornament. My pages would never be torn, my spine never cracked, I would never be read or understood. I would merely express her anguish before the world. 

My doodles were always messy. Always rough. When I finished a sketch I would dog-ear the page it was on, deliberately. Ritualistically. Then I would look at what my absent mind had drawn. And I would fantasize. Imagining myself, perhaps, speaking to the picture I had drawn, or perhaps inhabiting it. 

It was the girl from my dream, this time, and another girl I didn't recognize. Black, perhaps mixed race, with a profound anger and weariness in her eyes. She was leading the other girl? Or maybe the other way around. It was fascinatingly unclear. They resented each other, but they were moving in a clear direction…

Strange. The girl in my dream had been arguing with everyone around her, flailing, as if she had believed she was in a coma dream and could not wake from it. This was not the same sort of mindset. It was not as relatable. 

I licked my lips. I had never told my mother that sometimes when I drew pictures, things happened. "Taylor," I whispered. 

A wind stirred around me. This was not a normal aspect of atmospheric conditions within military grade storage lockers. I cautiously pushed the door open a notch, and…

_**-c- Taylor -c-** _

We were standing next to the vortificer when I fell out of a storage locker. And by me, I mean another me. One who was twelve. I recognized her immediately. How could I not? She was the idealized image of the self I'd lost, here before me as if she'd never gone away at all. 

Sophia coughed. "Hebert, you better explain this shit." 

"I…"

She looked at us, the younger Taylor. Then she smiled. "It is you! The girl from my dream!" 

She brushed herself off, and stood up. "I have a slight problem, and I couldn't think of anyone else who could help me." 

She reminded me of Labyrinth. So serious, so sad. Was I like this? I didn't think I had been. 

"Um, are you who I think you are?" 

She smiled again, wider this time. "Afraid not. I'm _me_. But I should have expected you'd ask something like that." 

Sophia chuckled. "I could take her back and Tattletale would have _a Taylor_ , and then I wouldn't die, right? That's the deal, isn't it?" 

I gave Sophia all the side eye I could spare. The girl, however, was horrified.

"Oh my God, I'm so sorry…you're in danger. I didn't even think…"

I held up a hand. "Hold on a minute. Explain what's actually going on. Aside from the fact that your mom is totally batshit." 

Sophia rolled her eyes. "Thank fuck. I was beginning to think anyone who reminded you of your mom would fill the massive hole in your soul." 

I sucked in a breath. "Wow. You try to stick to the facts and say things that are actually insightful and you hurt me worse than Emma ever did. She was an amateur." 

She shrugged. "I mean, in fairness, if that was true you and the bitch in the hat would have just started making out, so…"

I made a horrified noise. "To think back then I found your attitude refreshing, somewhat." 

She grinned. "Neither of us have changed, have we?" 

"Not to interrupt your simmering sexual tension, which frankly feels forced," said the girl…

I stared at her. "Finish that sentence _correctly_ and I will not drown you in bees." 

She laughed nervously. "Sorry. I read a lot of fanfics. I guess there's history, and you claim to hate each other, but…"

Sophia made a choking sound. "Nope. I'm killing her now. I wouldn't wish this shit on my worst enemy and you're just someone I used to know, Hebert." 

I quirked an eyebrow. "How mature of you."

The girl spoke quickly. "But the demon. My mother made a deal with a demon, it wants to possess me. Taylor Hebert. I am _a_ Taylor Hebert, literally speaking." 

I opened my mouth, then closed it. "I understood enough of that sentence to know that we're both in danger. Please explain. Quickly." 

Amy whistled. " _Tom!_ You might want to know about this. Come here." 

"Coming," I heard. 

I looked at Amy suspiciously. "Whose side are you on?" 

She shrugged. "Ours. I, too, fancy not dying." 

That was all there was right now, it seemed. When had that not been the case? I don't think I remembered. 

_**-b- Colin -b-** _

I ran the diagnostic again, becoming frantic with disbelief. The backup suit had booted, but the moment it had done so, Dragon had become irreparably corrupted. My best guess was some kind of quantum tunneling effect from the ray she'd been struck with. 

That had only been allowed to happen because I was being selfish and idiotic and very male on a routine patrol. I thought we had the luxury to indulge in human, long term relationship sort of behavior, and I had. 

The diagnostic was clear: there might never be a we again. 

"Father, what's wrong?" the small voice was almost childlike. I choked back tears. I was not Andrew Richter. He could have fixed this. All I did was break it. 

_**-c- Annette -c-** _

He hadn't taken her. _He hadn't taken her_. She was either not sufficient, or he didn't _want_ her, or something, but I had destroyed worlds for nothing. She had screamed at me, judged me (rightly or wrongly, it makes no difference at all), and run away from me. From Daniel. From us. 

I whispered softly, between sobs. "What do you want, my lord? What do you _want from me?_ " 

The answer came, not from a voice, but from a soft memory. Flashes, briefly. My face on the wall. Children being shot against it. Children who not two days earlier had been happy and well fed because of my rule, because of my constant negotiations with the various working unions and sovcorps. Blood, spattering. Mothers, wailing until they were hoarse. The image changed, but the wail continued. I saw a mushroom cloud lovingly shape itself into a laughing skull, and realized the wail was mine. 

Entire girlhoods were no more, not merely my own. I had done this. 

Another image. Parades, yearly, on Taylor's birthday. To remind myself what I fought for. Endless books, now. None of which I had read. 

A ghost in a glass cage. Condemning me sternly. 

My anger at "the proud and the lawful" had resulted in the only civil peace my country had known, since the Second World War. A time of national pride, where laws served the people. Then I had been wounded, and in my anger I had chosen to burn the world, just for a few more hours with the _purpose_ of my pride. 

_Myself_. I had been a fool. Abaddon had won a very long time ago. I had never considered that he would lie to me, but I didn't think, in retrospect, that he really had. 

The wail continued. Slowly I realized that I was not alone. I had been joined by an evacuation siren. A counterattack had finally begun. 

A hideous strength filled me, in place of the terrible resolve I admired about my grandmother's generation, and I rose. I strode purposefully up to the command center, eyes hard. 

If I could not rule, no one would. 

_**-a- Danny -a-** _

I choked back sobs, rummaging through the wreckage of our apartment for what little I could gather of what we'd briefly shared. A picture here, one of her sweaters there. My pistol, which she didn't know I had, sitting now on my hip in its holster. I had to assume she was gone. 

I knew it was coming, of course. The sting was that I had already faced this moment several times. Once before I knew she was Skitter, once when she killed Alexandria (I think her mother could have been proud of that, with proper explanation — it was certainly a feat), once when she'd left me for Chicago, once again at Gold Morning, once again when Scion had been confirmed dead and the woman in the hat had not yet appeared on my doorstep. 

I was tired of her dying and being lost to me. I was tired of being alone with my regrets. I think it's a normal thing for parents to want a troubled adult child to just move on with their lives, but I wanted her to just…be gone. I hated her, honestly. This was our shared character flaw. We hated what we could not let go of, and we let nothing go. 

But this seemed especially cruel. To have her pull away again, as a world I didn't even really live in burned…

I was beaten. I had never really faced it, not since Annette died. It hurt so much I had become numb to it, and I was simply done. 

They say when people decide what I had found myself deciding, they feel an exultation. A lifting of a weight. I once heard it compared, by a troubled poetry student of Annette's, to the soul leaving the body. Going on ahead. 

It was this that the _whump_ of the jump jet represented, landing on my lawn. A man emerged from the craft, standing in golden armor and holding a glowing blade. I cocked my pistol, holding it at low ready. "Mr Hebert. I'm looking for your daughter," he said in the most amicable voice I had heard in a while. 

"She's lost," I said. I went down to meet him.


End file.
